Ecosystems are essential to sustain life. A fallen leaf, decaying on the earth in preparation to go back into it, can be as much of an ecosystem as is our entire planet. Size doesn’t matter. What matters is that in an ecosystem the constituent parts are in relation with each other and their surrounding environment. They are interconnected and work together.

Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) is part of an ecosystem of ideas, attitudes, historical events, and social and political structures and institutions, to name just a few ‘organisms’ of this particular ecosystem. Ecosystems can be fragile, balanced, healthy, affirming, debilitating, and even oppressive.

Seemingly fragile, in our country, the fact that CSE is still alive means that there is something that feeds and nurtures it.

Vani Viswanathan tells us what gives her and the TARSHI team hope – the people and institutions that hold it all together and how they do it, one slow step at a time – parents, schools, teachers, NGOs, content creators.

CSE’s ‘natural habitat’ is often considered to be the classroom, but as our contributors show us, CSE also lives, breathes and thrives in habitats as disparate as neighbourhood parks, jobs-training centres, playgrounds and sports fields, law schools, family discussions, and digital spaces. What goes into making and sustaining CSE ecosystems that are affirming and inclusive?

In an interview with Shikha Aleya, Dr Sangeeta Saksena talks about how the work of Enfold, an institution she co-founded, with schools, colleges and child-care institutions has grown over the years, engaging children along with parents, teachers and caregivers.

Anindita Kargupta from ETASHA, an organisation that works with young people, often first-generation learners, to pursue education, training and sustainable employment, talks with Shikha Aleya about how CSE is integrated into their ecosystem.

Our favourite truth-teller, Dr Suchitra Dalvie, unmasks the cosmetic gynaecology industry’s claims and exposes its oppressive (and sometimes quite bizarre) falsehoods that fly in the face of CSE and affirming ecosystems.

Prerna dives deep into what the sexuality education ecosystem is (and is not) like for our budding lawmakers still in law school, who will one day interpret concepts like consent, power and sexual autonomy in the real world.

Reema Ahmad takes us into the heart of her family and her neighbourhood to show us what it takes to stand by one’s beliefs, principles and values around CSE as the parent of a young teenager.

Amita Malhotra Lalwani writes about sports, why they are important, especially in today’s digital age, and how the sports ecosystem is connected to CSE. As a sports parent, mother to a 10-year-old golf athlete, she knows what she’s talking about.

Khushi Kaushal, a 23-year-old comprehensive sexuality educator, reflects on what her Sunday CSE sessions with 14 to 18 year olds in an urban village in Delhi NCR have revealed to her about CSE, her Sunday cohort, and most of all, herself.

In Hindi, Imran Khan writes about how participatory digital culture is transforming CSE in India for the better and for the worse, and how it could be used in more affirming ways.

Young people. Parents. Teachers. Educators. Neighbours. Doctors. Law students. Content creators.

Playgrounds. Digital spaces. Schools. Colony parks. Universities. Homes. Sports fields. Training centres.

A little leaf. A large planet.

Ecosystems all. All, with the potential to affirm.

Go then, glow gently.

Cover image by Camila Leão for Fine Acts x OBI on The Greats