Tejaswini, which means bright or radiant, is the project which is being executed by the Government of Jharkhand and implemented by the Jharkhand Women Development Society (JWDS) for empowering 240,000 adolescent girls and young women in the age group of 14-24 years from 17 districts of Jharkhand state. These 17 districts have been further divided into 5 zones with 3 districts each, plus 2 more districts of Ramgarh and Dumka, where the pilot project was being implemented. HPPI was selected to implement the project in 2 out of the 5 zones, i.e., Zone 2 including Khunti, Latehar and Lohardaga distrcits and Zone 4 with Bokaro, Dhanbad, Jamtara,districts.
Tejaswini project aims to organize Adolescent Girls and Young Women (AGYW) of 14-24 years into groups called ‘Tejaswini clubs’ to come together for regular activities, counselling and guidance, life skills education and livelihood support services to build their confidence and enable them to make better future plans.
During the establishment phase in 2019, the project focused on engaging the project personnel and organizing trainings and workshops for effective implementation of the project activities. Surveys will be undertaken in more than 4,000 villages, to identify AGYW in 14-24 age bracket and register them into Tejaswini Clubs, to strengthen the service delivery for AGYW with focus on social empowerment, education, skills training and linkage for employment opportunities. Furthermore, families and community members will be informed about the project and mobilized to support the AGYWs to become active members of the clubs. Once the Tejaswini Clubs are functional, the AGYWs will be given induction training about the project. Further, there are life skill trainings scheduled after the induction training on four modules, i.e., Resilience & Soft Skills, Health & Nutrition, Rights & Protection and Financial Literacy. All the AGYWs are supposed to attend all four of these trainings, one after another, to gain knowledge on several important topics.
In 2020, the project team will focus on completing all the four modules of life skill trainings to be given to around 80,000 AGYWs after which the girls will make their future plans regarding their education or vocational/business skills training, if they want to pursue. Once, the girls select their future course of action, they will be linked to education or skill training as per their chosen line of interest based on their aspirations or competency.