Dr Maithreyi Ravikumar, Strategic Lead – Adolescent Health, was invited as a panelist to the India Life Skills Conference held on November 30, to speak on the topic of ‘How to Teach Skills We Don’t Have?’ During the discussion, she highlighted that life skills education is closely related to the values that we aim to instill in children, adolescents, and others. Therefore, understanding our values is crucial before we can teach these skills to others.

During The National Menstrual Hygiene Conclave, which was organized by Uninhibited and Menstrual Hygiene Action Initiative (MHAi) on 23 November, Dr Ravikumar shared the organization’s experience of working with adolescents on menstrual health hygiene. She contributed to a group discussion on scaling up strategies to involve boys and men on the issue of menstrual hygiene by sharing KHPT’s experiences of building parent-daughter relationships and sensitizing Gram Panchayats on issues of menstrual hygiene.

She also presented a paper on the need to reflect on the research methods and data collection practices applied to understanding childhoods and adolescence, at a talk at the International Conference on ‘Cultures of Childhood in Contemporary South Asia’, organized by South Asian University, New Delhi and CRY. The conference, which was held between 14-15 December, had the participation of academic and civil society organizations from India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.