The Solar Cinema: A popular platform for engaging men on domestic violence.

We establish community cinemas that operate a regular schedule in existing community spaces. Men in the community pay to attend because we show popular films they'll watch again and again. The space is reserved only for them, and the neutral, comfortable environment we create is a bit of a treat. We punctuate our films with public service announcements that are used to introduce topics to the naturally inquisitive men. Our facilitators are key. They use film events to build trust and ownership and then enroll the men in our 6-month curriculum.

Each cinema curriculum is bespoke. All cinemas will train men to consider core topics: me, relationships, sexual health and violence. However, the facilitator will include and emphasize learning objectives derived from the needs of women from the same community. When men see the benefits to their family and their neighbors first hand they are more likely to adopt and support attitudes of equality.

Training is conducted in confidence to promote self-discovery through facilitated debates. Issues are proposed on the screen. News clips, film snippets and public service announcements encourage discussions about common images of men and women in society: What does it mean to be a man? How are men different from women? By debating the attitudes commonly projected in society, men begin to understand, accept and adopt more equitable alternatives.

Every 6 weeks, the men will be taught a new communication skill such as poster-making or public speaking. With their new skills they develop an outreach program to raise community awareness on issues of their choice.

To encourage continued advocacy from graduates we will support them by training their peers and engaging their community in further campaigns.

The skills and perspectives men develop help them relate to women in their community. Husbands consider the emotions of their wives; brothers help their sisters with domestic chores.

Women benefit. Men benefit. The community benefits.

After internal and peer analysis of our pilot we have concluded that the single biggest constraint to scale is the successful recruitment and retention of male trainers with relevant the training and experience.

Because the field of working with men is still developing there is a short supply of male trainers who are experienced in working with men.

We will circumnavigate this by developing Community Facilitators. We will run a short series of films and training events in the communities we work with. By attracting men with film, and then initiating discussions within the prevailing group we can identify young men who have the potential to be trained in a Community Facilitator. The young men who we seek to train as facilitators are well respected by their peers, show sensitivity to the topic of gender and masculinity, and also show maturity in discussions with peers and other members of the community.

By sourcing our facilitators from the communities themselves, we are able to expand rapidly and retain a sense of community ownership. We are developing a bespoke training program with experienced trainers that build on the confidence and sensitivity of the facilitators to produce effective and reliable trainers.

We are in the process of developing out Community Facilitator training program with organisations who have experience in training young men from communities as facilitators. We are in discussion with Magic Bus and CORO, both in Mumbai.

My research began in 2007 with an in-depth review of programs and organisations with similar goals. It was not long before those I met and revisited began to pledge support and resources. In order to understand their motivations, I began to analyse their mission and objectives.

Innovators: e.g. Breakthrough. Innovators develop tools and programs in-house, incubating home-spun ideas garnered from their own experience. The R&D process takes years and is resource intensive. Breakthrough are keen to help us develop additional pilots. They have started to fundraise to support us and have offered us access into their communities to this end.

Implementers: e.g. CORO. They have a stronger aversion to risk and tend to innovate on their current work in incremental steps. Implementers like CORO have offered locations for us to trial the model and are supporting us with technical assistance on monitoring and evaluation, community facilitator training and trust management.

Trainers: e.g. SAMYAK. These organisations specialise in one or more field working with men e.g. training or curriculum development.

Incubators and Funders: e.g. Dasra. They focus on supporting third parties and have shown considerable interest. Program managers for Dasra Social Impact and UnLtd India have verbally pledged to support us in 2010 because we’ll meet their eligibility requirements. UnLtd India currently only works in Mumbai, but is due to operate in Pune in 2010. Dasra only admits operational projects, the reason we were excluded in 2009.

We’ll train 15,000 men
Over five years we intend to attract and enroll 15,000 men into our 6-month curriculum. We will operate 160 Community Cinemas over a period of five years and train 40 men at each cinema each year. Each cinema will serve about 300 adolescent men aged 14-20, operating year after year to train successive cohorts. After five years we expect 70% of our target demographic within each community will have been trained by us.

KPIs:
• Percentage of target men enrolled
• Attendance and Attrition Rates

Men attending our training will emerge with distinct and measurable shifts in their attitudes to key gender issues such as self-awareness, personal responsibility, the perceived role of women and personal relationships. Men's relationships with women and other members of the community will be improved. Women, peers and siblings will notice a change in their behavior.

KPIs
• % of men who show a positive shift in attitude to at least one gender biased statement
• % shift in men’s attitudes to a series of gender statements e.g. ‘Its important for a man to show his strength in a relationship’

We’ll also poll women
We believe that the woman will be able to notice a change in men’s attitudes too. We’ll take qualitative evidence as well as gauging changes in their attitudes.

KPIs
• % shift in women’s attitudes to statements such as ‘My son/brother helps with domestic chores always/sometimes/never’
• % shift in women’s answers to statements such as ‘My son/brother would never eve tease the neighbor’s daughter’ (I agree/disagree/don’t know)

The communities will change too
Over five years, we expect to reach 150,000 people who we'll target to understand and support the issues we promote in our outreach activities. We expect that existing programs for women will benefit from this too.

KPIs
• % shift in attitudes to statements such as ‘A man should have the final decision about family planning’
• Sometimes it is justified to hit a woman
• Rates of Female School Attendance and Attainment