Day 8: Ending Gender Violence: Mapping the Road Ahead

On the second Sunday of the 2018 campaign, a small group of Prajnya volunteers and partners got together for a discussion on gender violence activism in post-#MeToo India. Prajnya partners who attended were Sujata Mody from Penn Thozhilalar Sangam, Bader Sayeed from Roshni and Tamilarasi from Human Rights Foundation. Nirupama Sarathy, first Prajnya Campaign Coordinator, who works with several development, human rights and youth programmes, was able to attend. From Prajnya, we had Nandhini Shanmugham (Trustee), Sudaroli (Programme Officer), Nafeesa Usman (Campaign Coordinator) and Swarna Rajagopalan (Founder).

While planning the campaign, it has felt as if we should be acknowledging the #MeToo wave of revelations as an important watershed, and they have been. At the same time, all of us know from the work we do everyday, that even this barely makes a dent in what remains to be done. While all of us are engaged in public conversations around the issues, we rarely sit together and talk. Hence, this breakfast gathering.

Perhaps inevitable in 2018, given recent events, was that the issue we kept circling back to was workplace sexual harassment.

• Lacunae in the law
• The government's failure to keep up its obligations
• Poor compliance, especially training, so that people don't know how to document their experiences
• Engaging with the discourse on workplace sexual harassment
• Advocacy with the government on this issue.

The second area that received a great deal of attention was the importance of working with youth. We shared our mixed experiences of doing this, and our views on the best ways to reach young people and students. Nirupama Sarathy suggested that one should speak to young people in the ways that they value, draw them in and then they would stay with a cause. Tamilarasi shared HRF's experience working with schools. We agreed that it was important to reach beyond city-centers to young people in suburban and semi-urban centers around Chennai. 

The conversation inevitably flowed to fundraising challenges, especially CSR. 

After a brief discussion on funds, we reviewed our priorities and in this round, we identified audiences rather than issues: students, panchayat leaders, boys and men, girls in semi-urban and rural areas. We noted that parliamentary elections are imminent and resolved to work more systematically together in 2019. 

WCC Students Audit: How safe are our public spaces?

How safe are the streets of Chennai? Are there streetlights, are there people around who can hear you call for help if you're in trouble. are the pavements usable, accessible? Students of the English Department at Women's Christian College set out to answer all these questions and more, by auditing areas around Nungambakkam and Egmore as part of the campaign.

WCC tied up with us for Daan Utsav this year, and their volunteers worked hard to raise funds and spread awareness about Prajnya's work. So when we went to them with the proposal for a safety audit, we had no doubts about the capability of the students to undertake the project. Prajnya volunteer Anupama Srinivasan conducted a training session for the students, where she explained the objectives of the audit, and took them through the process.

The students were then divided into 5 teams, each of them covering one of the areas marked on the map.

Following the training on November 19, the students were supposed to audit the areas until December 7, when they were supposed to present their results to the Prajnya team. Further, they were supposed to make one consolidated presentation on December 10 at the Public Forum we had planned as part of the campaign. But since we had to reschedule our programmes and cancel the public forum, the results workshop finally happened on December 21, and as expected, the students came up with astute observations from a thorough audit.

The final report will be published by mid-January - check this space for a link!

Many hands make... more work, light work, better work, fun work!

This is a photograph of all those who contributed to making the campaign a success AND who were present on the final day. It's a photograph that misses many. But here's a who's who of this year's campaign-makers. Here's a very personal post to tell you a little about everyone and to acknowledge their work.

No thanks though, because they are Prajnya and one cannot thank oneself.

Anupama Srinivasan, our Campaign Coordinator, must go first. From conceptualising the themes that marked this year's campaign, to fundraising very successfully, to reaching out to new constituencies and partners, she had lists, and lists of lists, and schedules for making lists and following up lists that warmed the cockles of my heart! But more to the point, she got through her lists with alacrity and there were hardly ever things backlogged because they had been left unfinished. Anupama ran this year's campaign smartly, systematically and diplomatically and the result was that we were really able to build on last year's legacy and reach out to a much larger audience.

Subhashini Selvanathan, Prajnya's administrator, is integral to every part of every activity of Prajnya's. This year, her engagement with the campaign went even deeper and she was an active contributor to planning and process. She has also been the person who has got things printed, copied, bound, distributed, mailed. Without her, it is only honest to say, we would not be able to manage to do a fraction of our work a fraction as well.

Vasughi Adityan came to Prajnya in the summer but by campaign time, she had become an important member of the team. She only takes on what she can definitely accommodate in her schedule but we have learned that when she takes things on, you don't have to worry about them for one second more. The roundtable for support services providers was Vasughi's idea and she put it together in just three days!

Sweta Narayanan, a part of Prajnya's core team, moved back to India the night before our press conference and led the media outreach for Prajnya. Hamsini Ravi joined her by the fourth day of the campaign and handled press releases as if she had been doing it all her life. Because of Sweta and Hamsini, we were able to be more organised and ambitious in getting listings, stories, photos out.

Here, I want to mention Meera Srikant who volunteered to do a couple of features on the campaign and Sumita Pai who volunteered to edit. Meera wrote some of the curtain-raiser features and she also took responsibility for collecting logos from partners--a very important task that needed a responsible person. Sumita got us started on 'Call for Help.'

Perhaps the most substantive beginning we have made with this year's campaign was the Gender Violence Report, and that would not have been possible without the support and encouragement of Kavitha Muralidharan, Shalini Umachandran and Zubeda Hamid. Nandhini Parthib came on board to edit overnight. And Gynelle Alves drew the cover for us.

Kavitha also translated 'Call for Help' into Tamil for us.

Apurva, our youngest volunteer this year, kept newspaper clippings for us through the campaign.

Uma Vangal and Nandhini Shanmugham were pillars of strength, especially at the public events, with Nandhini quietly doing the things that needed doing--whether the paanai or mementos or registration or small last minute arrangements and Uma stepping up to the mike time and again to speak for Prajnya.

Nirupama Sarathy, last year's Campaign Coordinator, made the time between her travels to come in and volunteer during the campaign.

Nirupa Sundaravadanan juggled her medical practice and the needs of a small child to do the most unglamorous but essential task of the campaign--preparing, maintaing and putting into regular use, email lists. If you got an email from 'Prajnya Outreach,' it was because she sat down diligently and sent it out.

David found us at Chennai Twestival and volunteered to help us with campaign events. Checklist maestro, we really appreciated his resourcefulness, his cheerfulness and his willingness to step in and do what was needed--from stage decoration to mike checks to setting the projector and laptop.

Amrutha Rajagopalan designed all the lovely public event posters and invitations for this year's campaign. She also helped set up the Collaborative Cooking wiki and took photos at the concert. Nirupama Kapil and Tryphena Kirubakaran designed the Collaborative Cooking poster.

We had four student volunteers from the Asian College of Journalism work on the Bursting Media Bubbles post series in this blog. Thank you, and we hope you will continue to blog for us at keepingcount.wordpress.com.

This year's 'Friends of Prajnya'--those partners and supporters--who really came through for us: Dr. Prasanna of PCVC, Vidya Reddy of Tulir, Shiamala Baby of FORWORD, Lister Metropolis, Babu Jayakumar of TNIE, Seetha Ravi of Kalki and the team at Queen Mary's College.

And finally, not because we value your support and presence least, but because it goes so much beyond the campaign: Dr. Thara, Koushik Udayashankar and Shyamala Rajagopalan.