Dhanya Ajay - Director Vocational Services
When I heard about “outlawed” from my son who is a part of this student run organisation, what really struck me was the enthusiasm and dedication this bunch of youngsters were putting in, to bring in basic legal awareness for students. Though their plans were put on hold due to the pandemic,after the online awareness workshop idea came about, which could reach a much bigger group of students there was no looking back!
After the successful completion of the workshop that was conducted with Annai Velainkanni college for women with almost 300 students, were at RCCK and outlawed are looking forward to the workshop on the 29th and 30th of August catering to a bigger audience
So what Does Outawed do? Here it is in their own words:
OutLawed is a student-run organisation that seeks to bolster citizen engagement with law and policy by educating school students on facets of Indian law. We believe that access to law is a crucial tool in becoming an empowered citizen of society.
The core team consists of 20 college students from the best universities in India, who are extremely passionate about the cause of legal education and awareness. Our implementation of our primary initiative of legal education for school students was delayed by the global pandemic, but we have not let that deter us from our path!
The team has begun working towards their goals, by conducting numerous webinars, where we have reached out to over 1000 students in the past few months. We have engaged organisations such as the Center for Internet and Society, Trilegal and legal stalwarts such as Dr. Aditya Sondhi (ex Additional Advocate General for Karnataka), Dr. Anup Surendranath, and Senior Advocate Gopal Sankaranarayan, We also regularly create content on social media to educate the masses on basic legal concepts.
We also organized two fundraisers for those affected by the lockdown due to COVID-19. We raised money through one of our online sessions and donated around Rs. 50,000 worth of rations and supplies to tribal communities in Tamil Nadu, transgender individuals in Karnataka, and families in slums across both states. We also ran a campaign to donate money to Mission Aahan Vaahan, an initiative by NLSIU Bangalore alumnus to charter planes and fly migrant workers back to their hometowns. We raised over a lakh to help get these workers home.
The past few months have also been extremely fruitful for our School Outreach programme, as we have hired an excellent lot of teachers to lead this programme. Further, we have also been training our teachers to ensure the best teaching methods are employed by them. They have taken workshops on teaching by seniors teachers from Teach For India. The teachers have also undergone a gender sensitivity and anti-sexual harassment workshop by an NGO called Rohaa, so that each of them can maintain a healthy and inclusive classroom environment.
We are now ready to start sessions for school students! While we wish that these classes could be in person, we have devised online activities that we think will be equally engaging for these students.
The OutLawed syllabus for the School Outreach Programme provides a contemporary understanding of the law and politics, which will not only aid students to be better citizens, but also help students perform better in academics as studies show a positive relation between awareness of current affairs and examination results. Further, it will also enhance their understanding of various Social Studies subjects being taught in schools. It shall include themes such as, Information Technology Laws, Right to Information, Election Laws, Consumer Protection Act and Contract law.
Our primary target would be students who are currently in their 8th and 9th grade, as we believe that that is when students form the basic understanding of the society around them and understand laws and the government structure. We understand that these students already have online classes, which is why you will notice that none of our programs take up more than 10-12 hours. The presentation attached below has all the details on the different types of programs you can choose from, per your convenience.
We hope that you find this initiative by OutLawed interesting and valuable. A collaboration with your esteemed institution would be very special for us.
