Gender and Caste Workshop
The Blue Blooms Summer Program 2025 was designed to create a transformative, reflective, and age-appropriate learning space for children aged 4–15 years. It seeks to create a transformative learning space where young learners are encouraged to explore the question of who they are: not in isolation, but in relation to others, to history, and to structures of power.
Through an engagement with the theme of “Gender and Caste”, the program intends to deepen the learner's understanding of identity, difference, dignity, and justice.
This year, our summer program is not just about awareness; it is about cultivating a new imagination, one where dignity is non-negotiable and every child knows they belong.
There are two types of identity: identity you choose or achieve (acquired identity) and the identity you are born with (ascribed identity).
Our identity is not just one thing. It is made up of our family, our work, our choices, and also what society allows us to be.
Why Gender and Caste?
Gender and caste, at the core of Indian society, shape our access to resources, our everyday interactions, and our sense of self. These are not peripheral issues; they lie at the very heart of how inequality is structured and reproduced in everyday life. For our learners, caste and gender are not merely theoretical concepts; they are deeply embedded in their everyday experiences and shape both how they perceive themselves and how others perceive them.
When these are explored in age-appropriate and reflective ways, we lay the foundations for a just and compassionate community.
Learning Themes and Engagement
The two-week program was structured around age-differentiated modules, with a common theme focused on Identity, Caste Difference, and Belonging. Each day involved storytelling, discussions, and visual expression. For example, the story “The Boy and the Bindi” helped reframe how we understand beauty and expression. Children explored how language, pronouns, and media representation shape perceptions and relationships.
Through discussions on feelings, children explored both personal and systemic dimensions of power and difference. Their sessions prioritized affirming each child’s experience while making visible the hierarchies often rendered invisible. Facilitators tried to explore caste through multiple lenses. They initiated discussions and shared curated visual material to open reflective conversations. Learners were encouraged to question caste hierarchies, identify discrimination in subtle everyday practices, and think about fairness, voice, and equality.
How Caste and Professions Intersect
Through a comic strip and short documentaries on manual scavenging, learners examined how caste influences professions and how certain castes are linked to specific kinds of work.
Do all these jobs get the same respect? Why or why not?
Is caste a factor of respectability?
Why do you think some people are made to do the jobs most dangerous to their health and life, even when they risk dying from them? How does this connect to caste?
What genders do you associate with these different roles, items, and activities?
Testimonies from the learners
“I thought caste-based discrimination was something that happened in the villages and not in the cities. But the sessions helped me understand that it exists in cities, but in a different way.”
“I really liked the story Kali and the Snake as it talked about snake catchers and my uncle is a snake catcher. I was really happy to see my people in the story!”
“I see in my class how some of my classmates maintain distance from a student who is a Muslim. They do that because they feel that her food is dirty as she eats non-veg. I did not like that.”
