Breakthrough is a 25-year-old organisation working to make gender-based violence unacceptable by transforming the culture that permits violence. We envision a world in which gender-based violence is unacceptable and in which all people enjoy their human rights and live with dignity, equality and justice.
Breakthrough’s mission is led by young people aged 11 to 25 years. As they rise against gender-based violence, we also support them with media tools that shape public narratives and inspire people to build a world of equality, dignity and justice.
Through our direct work with adolescents (11-18 years old) and young people (Team Change Leaders – 19 to 25 years old youth) in schools and communities and our Gender Transformative Education System scale up initiative, we have reached 2.3 million adolescents and 3000 young adults, both boys and girls across 4 direct intervention states – Delhi/NCR, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand; and 2 states Punjab and Odisha in partnership with the state governments.
In addition to this, our media programme (digital and mainstream) plays a critical role in shifting norms and narratives on gender. We use media, specifically SBCC to develop and support content, narrative/messaging, and conduct media training to seed alternative narratives; support tricky and difficult conversations around regressive cultural norms in the community. Our work on pop-culture with content creators pushes for gender-progressive storytelling.
Further to this, with the aim of building an ecosystem of support and collaboration, we extensively use various platforms to disseminate information highlighting the issue of VAWG and spread the need to work on preventive approaches at different levels – local, regional and global. We contribute towards creating an enabling policy, resource and response environment for addressing violence against women and girls; and positioning issues of adolescents (both boys and girls) with diverse and relevant stakeholders.
