Breakthrough Trust works toward making violence and discrimination against women and girls unacceptable. We change gender norms by building the leadership of adolescents, youth, and their communities, as well as by using media campaigns, the arts, and popular culture to build a more equal world around us. Working across four states, 11 districts, and 733 Gram Panchayats, Breakthrough has reached over 700,000 adolescents and their communities. In addition, it’s systems change scale-up is in two states across 53 districts and 56,000 schools.
Discrimination and violence affects more than a billion women and girls. Social norms often block the recognition that violence is occurring.
Breakthrough uses theater, social media, and pop culture as well as training and education to nurture cultural change.
Mallika Dutt and Sonali Khan have seen awareness increase, and believe that the millennial generation offers great promise.
Media campaigns have reached tens of millions of people, and demonstrated influence on cultural norms, including an increase in the age at which girls are married in India.
Breakthrough is currently involved in making the Indian government school system a gender-transformative one. One that brings in gender-equitable behaviors in the classroom by both teachers and school admin staff, to ensure girls complete secondary education and all adolescents reach full potential—reaching 3 million adolescents in over five years.
Policy uptake and influence integration of gender equity into development agendas and national health and education outcomes. Public agencies address issues including early marriage and sex selection; individual behaviors change due to more progressive gender attitudes.
Managing Director, Sesame Workshop India
Program Director, Gender Equity and Governance, Breakthrough
Attorney and human rights advocate Mallika Dutt was working in human rights and social justice at the Ford Foundation in India when it struck her that the broad global media coverage of the United Nations' 1995 World Conference on Women in Beijing had not influenced everyday people—her family, her friends. After asking herself what could engage whole societies in facing and changing the cultural norms that drive the enormous but rarely acknowledged human rights issue of violence against women and girls, she produced a music video that brought the taboo subject of domestic violence into pop culture and founded Breakthrough in 1999. Sonali Khan joined Breakthrough from a high-profile broadcast journalism career, bringing a focus on measurable impact and scale. Their partnership has resulted in a data-driven integrated media and community mobilization strategy. Both are sought-after human rights experts, invited to influence international and national dialogues that drive policy decisions. Both Mallika and Sonali have stepped down in 2017, though Mallika remains on the Board.
Sohini Bhattacharya became the new President & CEO in 2017. Sohini Bhattacharya is an intrepid intrapreneur and social change enthusiast who has 25+ years of experience in the development sector. Prior to Breakthrough, Sohini had helped found an organization working with women, worked directly with grassroots communities on livelihoods projects and built market-artisan interfaces. Sohini spent 10 years at Ashoka Innovators for the Public, first ramping up the India program and then working on institution building for Ashoka in South Asia. Sohini was also instrumental in helping set up Asian Venture Philanthropy Network (AVPN) in India, an offshoot of EVPA in Asia. Sohini sits on the board of 4 grassroots organisations in India and is a Trustee of Read India, a sister concern of Read Global, creating community-led sustainable libraries.
Breakthrough has reached more than 700,000 adolescents and youth in India through school and community programs, ensuring girls face less discrimination, complete school, and delay their age of marriage. An RCT evaluation of Breakthrough’s 2014-2016 school-based gender-equity program in Haryana found significant improvements in gender attitudes toward education, employment, and women’s roles among girls and boys, as well as an increase in gender-equitable behaviors such as interaction between boys and girls, and girls’ mobility. Breakthrough’s third-party evaluation of its adolescent empowerment program showed reduction in the age of marriage for girls and increase in schooling years. Breakthrough’s mass and digital media campaigns reached over 45 million people in India over the years. Breakthrough served as the implementing partner for the National Health Mission’s adolescent training program, RKSK, in Uttar Pradesh, and is a member of the government of Haryana’s task force on the prime minister’s signature campaign, Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao (Save a Girl Child, Educate a Girl Child), to improve sex-ratio across 100 low-sex ratio districts of India. It also partnered with UNICEF to create a campaign on child marriage for the Office of the Chief Minister of Bihar in 2017. It is currently working with two state education departments on a system change model at scale in Punjab and Odisha.
Sohini Bhattacharya is the CEO and President of Breakthrough, a global human rights organization working to drive culture change to build a world where all people live in dignity, equality,…
