The Aarohini Initiative, founded in 2011, is a girls’ empowerment and education program rooted firmly in the philosophy that girls and boys must receive an education that teaches them to critically examine the role and construct of gender in their own lives and communities, and search for ways to build more egalitarian and equitable structures in their place. Initially, the program was implemented in 946 Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas (KGBVs), government-run residential girls’ schools, across Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, India. However, understanding the critical need to involve boys and men in the conversation, the program began expanding its reach to a subset of co-educational upper primary schools in Uttar Pradesh.

At its core, the Aarohini Initiative is a teacher training program that imbues teachers with the mindset and tools to critically examine the social and political conditions of their lives and the systemic causes of their oppression. The intensive workshops and discussions are designed to support and enable teachers as agents of change within their schools and communities, and provide them with the tools and resources required to effect change. The program thus aims to create a chain of positive influence with teachers as agents of change, who in turn build the capacity of their students to recognize and challenge gender discrimination, and engage parents to ensure that the rights of their students are protected. The approach used by the program was conceptualized, tested, and formalized through 10 years of extensive work in Prerna Girls School, and employs critical feminist pedagogy and community mobilization as primary means of effecting change.

Critical feminist pedagogy is based on the ideology that girls and women must learn to critically examine the social and political conditions of their lies and the systemic of their oppression, and collectively find ways to strengthen themselves, resist oppressive societal norms, and transform their lives. Aarohini uses this pedagogy to first enable the teachers, most of whom are women, to critically examine and understand how gender constructs and impacts women’s and girls’ lives in India, including their own. By broadening and deepening the teachers’ understanding of gender, they learn to understand how it shapes and dictates the course of their and their students' lives. In this way, teachers are also encouraged to examine the role of education, and redefine what it means for an education to be empowering. They must expand their understanding of their role as teachers, and understand the theory and practice of critical feminist pedagogy so that they are able to successfully implement it with their students.Additionally, Aarohini believes that to create lasting change, the process of empowerment must be accompanied by a change in the girls' environment. Community mobilization hinges on expanding the teachers' role and preparing them for collective action. Teachers are urged to become advocates of change for their students. They learn how to drive, initiate, and catalyze change by generating awareness in the parent community, using role-play, music and critical dialogues to engage them and have them reflect on the necessity of girls "education as well as understand the importance of a girl" inviolable right to be a free, autonomous person. Community members are also engaged through student-led campaigns and rallies.

Additionally, Aarohini believes that to create lasting change, the process of empowerment must be accompanied by a change in the girls' environments. Community mobilization hinges on expanding the teachers' role and preparing them for collective action. Teachers are urged to become advocates of change for their students. They learn how to initiate and

catalyze change by generating awareness in the parent community, using role-play, music and critical dialogues to engage them and have them reflect on the necessity of girls’ education, as well as understand the importance of a girls’ inviolable right to be a free, autonomous person. Community members are similarly engaged through student-led campaigns and rallies.

Thus, Aarohini is not simply a girls’ education and empowerment program, but an ecosystem that works to systematically eliminate discrimination faced by adolescent girls. It operates on the premise that through self awareness, a supportive and empathetic environment, and a culture of dialogue, girls can achieve positive life outcomes. In this way, Aarohini aims to build girls’ aspirations and self-perceptions of themselves as equal, autonomous persons worthy of respect. Similarly, boys learn to recognize the ways in which their mothers and sisters are oppressed by patriarchy, as well as the unearned advantages and privileges they receive as boys. Through the process of deconstructing and unlearning patriarchal concepts of masculinity, they become strong advocates for the women in their lives and allies in building a more gender equitable world.