Eleena George

Eleena George is educating people convicted of gender-based violence to become champions and change agents to stop crime in their communities.

Rooted in her experiences with inmates at Delhi’s Tihar Jail, Eleena’s idea centers on reducing violence and crime against women by engaging young men in correctional facilities and high-crime neighborhoods in meaningful conversations about gender, masculinity, and violence. Being the only woman going into the prison every day, Eleena noticed that many prisoners asked her questions about sexuality, menstruation, etc., which led her to a deeper understanding of the ignorance of women’s issues and the fact that there was no knowledge resource available for these men which led to an increase in gender-based violence. To work on this, Eleena developed a contextual and comprehensive gender sensitization educational toolkit called ‘Pehal.’ Utilizing relatable materials such as comics, board games, and flashcards, ‘Pehal’ facilitates deep discussions on the roots and consequences of gender-based violence.

Eleena’s approach to this in a non-judgmental model allows the prisoners to learn and understand the consequences of their actions. The approach transforms inmates and ex-inmates into facilitators, fostering peer-led education and encouraging significant shifts in attitudes and behaviors toward women.

The initiative seeks to tackle the underlying social and cultural norms that perpetuate gender-based violence by educating and sensitizing men, especially the ones convicted of crimes against women, about gender, masculinity, and the consequences of their actions. Through continued workshops and trainings on topics such as consent, toxic masculinity, rape culture, the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO), domestic violence, etc., Eleena strives to disseminate the desirable knowledge, attitude, and behaviors, and advocate for the end of crime against women at the community level. This innovative approach aims to create systemic change by integrating gender education into rehabilitation processes, ultimately reshaping attitudes and behaviors toward women in the wider community.

Despite legal frameworks, violence against women in India remains rampant, with high rates of physical and sexual violence reported. According to the National Family Health Survey, around 30% of women in India have experienced physical or sexual violence from their partner. This includes incidents of rape, domestic abuse, honor killings, and other forms of gender-based violence. One of the significant challenges is the deep-rooted patriarchal attitudes and gender stereotypes that perpetuate violence against women. There is a lack of awareness and understanding of gender-based violence among the general public at the community level. Stigma still hinders reporting, and many cases don’t result in consequences, failing to set examples.

The current system is not designed to provide justice to the survivors nor long-term security for women in the community, because rehabilitation does not include any awareness building or counselling that would help convicts understand the consequences of their actions. In correctional facilities, a significant proportion of inmates have committed crimes against women, and there is a high recidivism rate, with 25% recidivism for crimes against women.

Existing efforts to curb gender-based violence in India have mainly focused on women’s empowerment, and very rarely focused on educating men and young boys, especially the men incarcerated for crimes against women. Eleena noticed this gap and realized the need to create awareness and sensitize men, and to build a strong gender lens understanding in high-violence neighborhoods, facilitated by the representatives of the communities.

Built from the learnings of a pilot study done with 300 prisoners convicted of gender-based violence, Eleena’s strategy is multi-faceted, beginning with the development of the ‘Pehal’ toolkit in collaboration with inmates and gender experts. The ‘Pehal’ toolkit incorporates seven major themes: understanding gender and patriarchy, discrimination against women, society and culture, unpacking masculinity, sexual health and violence, sexual violence against children, code of conduct, and online violence against women. This toolkit uses engaging and relatable materials such as comics, board games, and flashcards to facilitate conversations. By training inmates and ex-inmates as peer leaders and facilitators, the program empowers individuals who have committed crimes to reflect on their actions, understand the root causes of gender-based violence, and influence their peers. This peer-led model ensures that learning and transformation continue beyond external interventions, with inmates conducting daily sessions using the toolkit inside prisons and ex-inmates continuing the work in their own communities.

In 2020, Eleena registered Project Unlearn, aiming to institutionalize the ‘Pehal’ toolkit within prison systems and expand its reach. Despite the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, which especially restricted entry into Delhi prisons, Eleena continued her work and trained ex-inmates as facilitators. By 2021, Project Unlearn received funding from the India Vision Foundation to expand into Haryana prisons, where the model proved effective within six months. Seven inmates were identified and trained to facilitate sessions along with five ex-inmates, and over 500 inmates went through the ‘Pehal’ toolkit and showed positive results in their understanding of gender-based violence and its consequences.

Eleena’s work is structured into various programs tailored to different settings. Within correctional facilities, the program involves training a batch of peer leaders who conduct sessions with fellow inmates. This model was successfully piloted in Tihar Jail and later expanded to Haryana and Uttarakhand prisons. In 2022, with ex-inmates as facilitators, Eleena widened the programming to reach outside of prisons, reaching observation homes and juvenile centers in partnership with the Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights (DCPCR) and the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW).

Apart from this, ex-inmates have also shown interest in taking the model into their communities. Eleena is currently piloting and designing a model that can work in a community space.

Partnerships play a crucial role in the scalability of Eleena’s work. Collaborations with institutions such as the India Vision Foundation have provided the necessary funding and support to expand ‘Pehal’ into new regions like Haryana. These partnerships also help in training prison authorities and welfare officers, ensuring that the curriculum can be institutionalized and sustained within the correctional system. Additionally, Eleena has established a network of institutional leaders, like senior officers from the Indian Administrative Services and Prison Director Generals, who see her model’s impact, especially on inmates and ex-inmates as facilitators/change agents and have played a key role in its institutionalization. This network plays a key role in spreading the work to different demographics as they see the impact on ground and invite Eleena to their states and prisons.

Impact measurement is a critical component of Eleena’s strategy. The effectiveness of the ‘Pehal’ toolkit is assessed through pre- and post-intervention surveys, qualitative feedback from participants, and formal impact studies underway. These evaluations have shown significant positive changes in inmates’ attitudes and behaviors towards women, evidenced also by the numerous ex-inmates who have approached her to become champions against gender-based violence in their own communities. In a pre- and post-test done with 400 inmates, the results showed a 60% increase in understanding of POCSO and child sexual abuse, and a 68% increase in understanding of toxic masculinity. To further the impact measurement, Eleena plans on incorporating the Gender Equitable Men scale into her work. The Gender Equitable Men (GEM) Scale is a measurement tool developed by Horizons and Promundo to assess attitudes toward gender norms, particularly focusing on equity in relationships and social expectations for men and women. The scale was grounded in qualitative research conducted with young men in low-income areas of Rio de Janeiro. Eleena is working on contextualizing this tool in her work.

Since its inception, the program has reached over 2,500 inmates across Delhi, Haryana, and Uttarakhand, and 400 juveniles in observation homes. It has also trained 10 external leaders and over 40 peer leaders (ex-inmates) within the prison system. The pilot programs provided valuable qualitative data, which are used to further refine the toolkit and its delivery. Additionally, Eleena is already being approached by different state governments, like Himachal Pradesh, to bring the model into their state.

Looking ahead, Eleena plans to further develop the community-based model, involving ex-inmates in curriculum development and piloting the program in local communities in Delhi. She aims to institutionalize the curriculum within correctional institutions nationwide, making it a standard part of rehabilitation. Eleena envisions that in the next 5-10 years, her curriculum will become a norm inside prisons, with mandated sessions for perpetrators of crimes against women. The plan is to train Prison Welfare Officers and Wardens to begin implementing her program. This approach will ensure that gender sensitization and violence prevention education become an integral part of the rehabilitation process, creating long-term systemic change.

Eleena, originally from Kerala, grew up in Delhi in a family where gender roles were balanced. Her mother was a nurse in a government hospital, and her father worked in a private firm but equally shared household responsibilities. Eleena, with two brothers, admired her father’s values and saw her parents’ relationship as a model of a healthy partnership. She graduated with a degree in sociology and psychology and was actively involved in the Hindi drama society, performing street plays on social causes. These experiences deepened her understanding of social constructs and their impacts on people, prompting her to introspect and question her own life choices.

Her engagement with street plays on topics like rape honed her skills in research, communication, and storytelling, which later influenced the curriculum she developed for inmates. In 2017, the idea for ‘Pehal’ took shape during Eleena’s fellowship with Ashoka Fellow Mohit Raj’s Project Second Chance, where her experience teaching inmates about various topics like math and Hindi evolved into a realization that she wanted to facilitate deeper conversations on gender and sexuality. Being the only woman working inside the prison at the time, this shift in focus was spurred by the inmates’ questions about women, sexuality, and menstruation, and her discussions with inmates convicted of crimes against women, which provided her with insights into their thinking. Eleena recognized the need for a structured curriculum to address gender issues. In 2018, she started focusing on researching and gathering data on how these men think, leading to a pilot project with 300 inmates accused of crimes against women. In 2019, she began creating the Pehal kit and developed it further through fellowships like Unltd India and Changelooms, which provided funding and insights into effective facilitation and leadership.