How I started a sex education revolution in India

This coming school year, 600,000 eleven to fifteen year old kids across every single region of India are going to be learning everything from puberty and menstruation, to consent, gender roles, safe sex, and LGBTQ, through my program Iesha Learning. They are going to role-play saying “yes” and “no” in complex social situations. They are going to learn that the menstrual cycle is actually 4 weeks, not 4 days, and how our bodies are so smart that they follow the rhythm of the moon. That it’s ok to feel sexual attraction. That boys can be kind and sensitive too, and that the heroes of Bollywood movies might actually get arrested if they stalked women like that in real life.

This sort of education, and at this scale, has never happened before in India. In a country where 80% of Indian women do not know why they menstruate (“it just happens”), and 53% of Indian children — more than half the population — has experienced sexual abuse, we have to understand the magnitude of the social taboo on sexuality and gender.

How is it that half a million middle and high schoolers are getting access to information that was withheld from their older siblings, and their parents, and their parents, and their parents? How did I manage to build something that changes kids’ attitudes, making a crack in the vicious cycle of violence and disrespect and gender inequality and that giant, silencing, uncomfortable, weird thing called a “taboo”?

Here’s my story of tackling the single most difficult, complex, and important social issue in one of the oldest and most traditional cultures on Earth - reach more on Medium.

If you are interested in being a bearer of the gender revolution in India, you can help! I'm looking for:

a. Large organizations reaching ~1 million students across India, who have teacher/facilitators on the ground, who would like to carry our revolutionary sex ed and gender content

b. Journalists (Indian and international) who are interested in the SOLUTION to gender equality and want to share the story of our partnership with Tata Class Edge, encouraging more organizations and schools to follow suit

If you are based in Silicon Valley and would like me to speak at your event or conference about wicked problems, systemic change, tech for good, or social movement building, please get in touch!