Pathways towards an equal future

Through Breakthrough facilitated sessions and conversations in schools and villages, young people build:

• Confidence and self-awareness
• Communication and negotiation skills
• Leadership and critical thinking
• Knowledge about gender, rights, health, and relationships

Girls are supported to stay in school, delay early marriage, and speak about their aspirations. Boys and young men are encouraged to question harmful ideas about masculinity and become allies in building equality.

Community engagement extends this work beyond classrooms. Breakthrough works with parents, caregivers, health workers, and community leaders to reinforce positive change and challenge harmful practices at the family and community level.

Taaron Ki Toli is Breakthrough’s flagship programme that works with adolescents in schools and communities, along with their educators, families, and local leaders.

Young people build the skills to identify their aspirations, speak up, and negotiate choices around education, marriage, work, household responsibilities, leisure, and more. As they move toward their goals, they inspire others, helping shift mindsets and create a culture of equality within their communities.

How Taaron Ki Toli Works

We deliver life-skills–based gender education tailored to different age groups:

Beginning Early (Ages 11–14)

A two-year foundational programme that helps young adolescents examine gender norms, explore aspirations, build agency, and learn negotiation skills.

Older Adolescents (Ages 15–18)

A three-year leadership journey supporting young people to speak up, navigate relationships, health and safety, and work towards more equitable communities.

Young Adults (Ages 19–24)

A three-year transformative programme that equips young adults to become gender-just leaders who challenge entrenched social norms.

Where We Work

We are building ecosystems that value girls, prioritise their rights, and catalyse change across four states:

• Uttar Pradesh: Lucknow, Gorakhpur, Ghazipur, Maharajganj
  
• Haryana: Rohtak, Panipat, Sonipat, Jhajjar, Karnal, Gurugram, Faridabad
  
• Jharkhand: Hazaribagh
  
• Delhi

Through films, music, digital platforms, and social media, Breakthrough creates stories that challenge harmful norms and open space for new ways of thinking. These stories reach young people where they already are, in ways that they best understand.

Breakthrough also equips young people with storytelling skills, enabling them to share their own experiences, spark conversations, and influence culture within their communities and beyond.

The stories we grow up with shape how we see ourselves and the world. They influence our beliefs about gender and too often reinforce limiting and harmful norms.

Breakthrough produces directly and also collaborates with artists, storytellers, and content creators to produce gender-progressive content that offers new perspectives and role models. When young people see stories that challenge stereotypes in the content they consume, they begin to recognise their own power to question norms and imagine new possibilities. 

Building Safer Digital Spaces

The rapid growth of technology has also led to new challenges, including gender-based violence online. Breakthrough addresses this by advocating for platform accountability and working with young people to build critical thinking and safer online spaces. We recognise online violence as a reflection of unequal access and deep-rooted gender norms and work to change both.

Breakthrough Media

• Keeping It Feminist – A podcast exploring gender stereotypes and representation in media
  
• Fursat Mein Serious Baatein – Conversations with film industry professionals on gender and violence in storytelling
  

Flip the Narrative – A digital series challenging gender norms in pop culture

We engage and align with key collaborators including central and state governments, education departments, multilateral organisations, civil society partners, school education systems, and communities to advance this collective effort.

To this end we work towards advancing gender equity in education in alignment with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and State Education Policies, and ensure the leveraging and scaling of insights gained from our initiatives in Punjab and Odisha to other regions.

Here’s more on how we work with different governments:

• Breakthrough was engaged by the state government to conduct a formative research in 8 districts for The Department of School Education.  The research included  Key Informant Interviews (KIIs) with Department officials  and  an in-depth analysis of state English and Social Science textbooks for Classes 6-8 to determine how gender is constructed and mediated within the school curriculum. A total of 196 chapters, 2026 pages were reviewed by gender and subject experts from Bangalore, Odisha and Delhi. 
• In Tamil Nadu, Breakthrough conducted a formative study that included textbooks review with a qualitative and quantitative analysis through a gender lens. 
• In the government of the Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, Breakthrough is partnering with the Directorate of Education of the Union Territory for three years to integrate “Taaron ki Toli”(TKT)  in their government schools for classes 6^th to 8^th. Significant progress has been made with the department investing in printing TKT volume 1  English, Hindi, Gujarati and Marathi. 

India Coalition For Education For Gender Equality

With its long-standing expertise in gender equality and social norm change, Breakthrough together with UNGEI anchors the India Coalition for Education for Gender Equality, a national platform that brings together over 32 civil society organisations, researchers, youth leaders, and academic institutions in a bid  to introduce & strengthen gender transformative education systems.. Together, the Coalition partners currently cover nearly 90% of India’s geography and reach over 50 million adolescents — representing approximately 16% of India’s adolescent population. While India has made significant gains in access to schooling, gender-based barriers persist — adversely affecting life opportunities for girls and young people. These challenges cannot be addressed through isolated programmes alone; they require coordinated, evidence-led, and system-level action. It was this perspective of a collective approach that sparked the origin of The Coalition.

The Coalition prioritises foundational systems-building — developing tools, frameworks, and evidence that governments, institutions, and practitioners can adopt and scale. The key areas of focus include strengthening gender-responsive teaching and learning practices, building shared evidence, indicators, and knowledge resources, influencing education policy, systems, and financing, and supporting inclusive education ecosystems that reach the most excluded.

Global Positioning for Gender Transformative Education 

Breakthrough has been actively contributing to multiple collaboratives at global level, such as the Accelerator for Shifting Gender Norms through Education and the Coalition for Good Schools to bring initiatives which are advancing gender equality in and through education.