We have been working on this really big puzzle that I had taken to the center the past few days. The puzzle glows in the dark and the children were all super thrilled about it. The idea with taking a large puzzle was to encourage teamwork and have the children work together. To a large extent this worked out well and many children participated or attempted to participate in helping out. There was some level of “too many cooks spoil the broth” around it but by and large the children were able to not be too chaotic. We did have an “incident” of sorts as we were all sitting around to do this puzzle. One of the girls was wearing a skirt and some of the pieces had gone under her skirt. One of the boys tried to communicate this to her so he could take the pieces but in a large group this was not heard. The boy then proceeded to lift her skirt something that was totally inappropriate. Even though I was right there I didn’t realise this had happened and only got to know both sides of the story much later. The girl was quite taken aback and shaken by the incident and only communicated to us the next day. She pointed out how there were some other cases of inappropriateness that she had observed in the past. We have always had a larger number of boys than girls at the center and today I realised maybe we just aren’t doing a good enough job of making the center a safe place for them.  I was quite shaken when I had heard what had happened and I honestly feel we need to do a lot better in having conversations about this sort of behaviour. This is one situation where I felt quite unequipped on how to have a reasonable dialogue with both the boy and the girl. I ended up thanking the girl for being open enough to talk about this and also asked her if she could bring it up whenever something of this sort happens so we can address it immediately. I promised her I would talk to the boy about it. I don’t think I communicated this well at all but one thing I did try to ensure was that she recognised that I was taking her concern quite seriously. Definitely feel that we also need to have a female facilitator at the center so these conversations could be easier. This particular girl is someone very confident and also comfortable with us so it worked out but this may not be the case in general. The learner too pointed out how in school she had a favourite teacher who would be quite supportive of the girls in class and how she would always feel comfortable talking to her. I also get the sense that this might be a recurring theme in this community. When I had asked the girl to try and bring it up immediately when something like this happened, she asked me how many girls I could help. It felt as though that she had recognised this to be a systemic problem and she felt telling me when it happens is a pretty bad solution. This hit me really hard and I definitely want to make it a point for us to really strive to make the center a safer space for girls. I wish I could have had a better dialogue about this and I’m going to try and be better equipped in the future. I feel we really need to think of a way to talk to the boys at the center about this. Venkatesh has had a small conversation about this once but it can very easily end up sounding like the girls are somehow lesser and weaker and need to be protected rather than the conversation being about equality and respect.