3 in for the democratizing promise of new media, which offers the possibility of transcending the spatial and social ghetto, both literally and figuratively. (Good Practice: ‘New Worlds, New Skills: Leadership Development with Muslim and Dalit Women’, Nirantar, 2011. Delhi, India. http://www.nirantar.net/leadership-2411-11-web.pdf) C. A Pilot Leadership Training Model: Placing Minority women in the vanguard of the ‘pull’ factor for education & development Given that we have been asked to share with this Forum ‘good practices’ I also wish to share with you another Leadership Training model for Minority Women that we have developed in India, and are attempting to get the Government to agree to role out in a pilot mode. Design Components: The pilot scheme will have 3 core components (with some overlapping inputs and cross-cutting impact)  Leadership development  Civic empowerment  Life and livelihood preparation Leadership development: Training inputs to a core group of selected women (per field site) will be given covering a broad range of gender empowerment needs, including understanding of personal life situation, community structures, political structures, legal information, information and training about government schemes and services, right to information, analyzing livelihood options, literacy and skill training to enhance or improve these options, and so on. To encourage mobility among Muslim women, the leadership development component will include travel and study tours to learn from best practices in women’s programmes elsewhere in the country and in the South Asian region. This component will also provide opportunities for inter-state sharing among women in areas covered by the scheme. Civic empowerment: This component will focus on giving leadership skills in interacting and engaging with civic authorities, the school system, local government structures, local self-government structures, police, and the local legal structures, including courts. This component of the scheme will also budget for a series of “events” per field site in the form of public hearings or focused planned interactions with public officials as a local grievance redressal mechanism. This will be a critical means of operationalizing the “pull factor” to make the local system responsive to the needs of the community. Life and livelihood preparation: As the process of empowerment and confidence building makes women desirous of improving the livelihood opportunities for their family, they will be given options, training and access to a revolving fund to operationalise improved selfemployment or vocational training. The pilot scheme anticipates giving access to life and livelihood preparation to a select number of women per field site