Expanded programs & trainings

That Takes Ovaries (TTO) offers expanded empowerment programs and trainings to organizations that service women and girls, including vulnerable populations. These expanded programs last 1 day to 1 month. They are different from our shorter 2-hour events. If you are instead interested in inviting us to conduct a shorter 2-hour event, click here.

These are two downloadable documents on our Expanded Programs and Training

Expanded Programs & Training: Bulleted One-Pager
Expanded Programs & Training: Detailed Info

• • •

• Who we are
• What we offer
• About programs & trainings
• Examples of our work
• Outcomes for participants
• Praise: U.S. State Department’s J-TIP (Anti-Sex Trafficking Program) staff
• Praise: From participants and staff

Who we are

• Consultants: That Takes Ovaries (TTO) is based in the U.S. and active around the globe. TTO is a consultant to other organizations, including non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who serve women and girls, including vulnerable and at-risk populations in the U.S. and around the globe.
• Global reach: Our programs and trainings for women’s empowerment and girls’ empowerment have been offered to hundreds of gatherings worldwide in urban and rural Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe, Australia and North America.
•  Unique model: Our empowerment model combines story-sharing, drama therapy and the arts and activism to raise participant self-esteem and leadership skills so they will be all-around confident, risk-taking females.  Because we believe that courage is contagious, we celebrate the bold acts of women and girls through personal storytelling in order to encourage participants to live more bold lives.

What we offer organizations who service women and girls

• Empowerment programs and trainings: Fun, celebratory, deeply personal and highly participatory. Programs and trainings can be anywhere from a few hours to 1 month in-country.
• Training of Trainers (ToT): Our replicable model can be used long after we leave.
• Dramatic plays: We can collect local women and girls’ true stories of courage, including their victories overcoming gender-based obstacles. We then turn these inspirational stories into a play that workshop participants perform for the larger community.
• Participants: For general populations or focused specific constituencies – e.g. females who’ve been sexually assaulted, prostituted or those at-risk. Also, a ToT can be offered for teachers, social workers, grassroots community leaders, etc.

About our programs and trainings

• Our workshops bring together women and girls to celebrate their courage by relaying real-life stories of times they were bold, often in their fight against sexism, discrimination and sexual assault.
• This simple but important act of sharing affirms the storyteller’s confidence and determination to keep taking risks in her life, personally and politically.
• Our workshops have a transformative effect on people’s lives long after they are over; participants are motivated to take more risks, such as stepping through the fear of public speaking to speak out for their needs.
• Men and boys can join in and proudly share stories of the courageous deeds of their mothers, wives and daughters.
•  We facilitate discussions for future action plans: Sustainable, long-term change to be initiated by the participants themselves.

Examples of our work

• India: Brought by the NGO Apne Aap to work in their urban and rural centers in red light and slum districts with sex trafficked/prostituted women and children, as well as those who are at-risk. Plus, we led a Training of Trainers (ToT) for community leaders, some of whom were illiterate.
• Nepal: Brought by the grassroots NGO Rural Women’s Network to teach adults to lead empowerment workshops for high school girls.
• Guyana, South America: Brought by the NGO Partners of the Americas via a U.S. Department of Labor grant to work with vulnerable adolescent girls. Plus, ToT programs for social workers and teachers from across Guyana.
• Training Manuals: Created two detailed manuals for training others in our approach.

Outcomes for participants

• Participants celebrate being women and girls.
• Spaces are created where women and girls’ experiences and lives are heard and respected.
• Participants learn to speak up through our step-by-step process of telling stories of their own courage.
• Participants learn to take steps to act as bold, confident risk-takers for personal and social change.
• Participants learn how to speak out to higher authorities about their needs.
• Participants learn to not accept limits imposed on them by a sexist society.
• Women and girls’ leadership and activism are developed.
• Participants begin the process of overcoming trauma through the use of drama therapy and storytelling.
• Participant-led dramatic theatrical performances raise community awareness of significant issues (e.g. assault and sex trafficking), thereby educating the public and authorities, such as judges and police.
• At a Training of Trainers (ToT), trainers are taught to impart the outcomes listed above.

Praise: U.S. State Department’s J-TIP (Anti-Sex Trafficking Program) staff called our model

• Highly effective
• Low cost
• Easily replicable by staff in the field

Praise: From participants and NGO staff

Quotes are from sex trafficked/prostituted women and girls living in slum or red light areas in India and the local NGO staff who work with this often isolated, vulnerable population.

The model of empowerment that That Takes Ovaries uses with women and girls around the globe has been very helpful to us here in our women’s centres situated around India, and in our work to help end sex trafficking on the India-Nepal border. The That Takes Ovaries model that we are still using here in India, long after [TTO] has left, is replicable and perhaps universal, and works well both in urban and rural communities. We encourage other NGOs and women’s organizations around the globe to work with Bobbi Ausubel and TTO.

 

Ruchira Gupta, Founder & President
Apne Aap Worldwide, India
Full Apne Aap/Ruchira Gupta Letter of Recommendation found here. [Downloadable PDF]

• • •

After a TTO workshop, a girl said:

• “I liked sharing my story because it felt good to open my heart and let out something so personal.”

A teenager said:

• “No one will step on you if you are bold and fight back.”

Two women participants said this upon leaving a workshop:

• “I want to come back tomorrow and sit here together with these women.”
• “Being here made me more courageous.”

A man participant said:

• “I am inspired hearing the women’s stories; now I will tell these stories to others.”

A woman participant said:

• “I heard these girls speak here; now I want to send my daughter to school.” (Instead of a life of prostitution.)

Community leaders said:

• “Now we will try to show [our] issues through drama.”
•  “This made us so happy; we will bring this process to our neighbors and groups.”

NGO staff said:

• “Now I know how to give a workshop.”
• “This was the only training where no one was bored.”
• “We have never seen the women and girls so engaged.”
• “I thought I could not work well with this community, but after today, I know I can.”

A teenager at a workshop passionately said:

• “We are going to close this red light area!”