And so we come to the end of the 2013 edition…

When more than 3 months ago I started work as Campaign Coordinator for Prajnya’s 16 Days Campaign against Gender Violence, Dr Swarna Rajagopalan and Anupama Srinivasan told me that ‘I’ll own the campaign.’ I didn’t really know what exactly that meant or how much they meant it, until now. Looking back, I realise the wonderful opportunity this campaign gave me to put together something that addressed concerns that were close to my heart, to interact with some fabulous people, and gave me the support to pilot programmes that I hoped would become a part of Prajnya’s work in the future.

It has been an extremely exciting and challenging three months, and the best part of the job was meeting so many extraordinary people – not only our resource people and volunteers, but also people in the audience for our various events, from whom we learnt so much. To say that it was a humbling experience would be an understatement.

This would be as good a time as ever to thank all the people who have made this wonderful journey possible. I’d like to thank Dr. Swarna Rajagoplan and Anupama Srinivasan for giving me the opportunity, for sharing their wealth of knowledge and experience, and trusting me with important campaign decisions. Immense gratitude to Subhashini Selvanathan, for being the most considerate, caring colleague she has been. I would have been lost if it weren’t for her organised ways. A big thank you to Ragamalika, our Media Associate, for doing far more than she had to and for being a pillar of strength in crunch times. A very special thank you to Shyamala Rajagopalan for being a kind and affectionate host, unfailingly enquiring about the campaign’s progress during the planning and assuring us that things would eventually work out fine, which it did.

Thanks to the Prajnya team: Nandhini, Sweta, Michelle, Vetri, Nirmal, Shambhavi, Krithika, Shakthi, Anand, Hemant and Vasughi.  Thanks are also due to all our enthusiastic volunteers: Prema, Vaishnavi, Shyamala, Saranya, Geetha and Cibi for being so generous with their time. Thank you Amrutha for your wonderful designs, they made the campaign look better. A big thank you to all our partner-organisations and resource persons for working with us to make the campaign a success. And most of all, much gratitude to all of you for following the Campaign Chronicle and for always supporting us.

The campaign is officially over, but it hardly feels like that for the Prajnya team. We are already busy planning work on initiatives that we piloted during the campaign, scheduling workshops and organising our calendar for the coming months! 

Next year, a different team will work on the campaign, but I hope to be around as a volunteer – as they say here, once a Prajnya Person, always a Prajnya Person. So, until next campaign – Tata!