The 2014 Campaign Calendar is up!

After months of brainstorming, as new ideas took shape and old ones came into fruition, we at Prajnya are finally ready to share with you our plans for this year's campaign.

 The 2014 Campaign Calendar is up. Here is a quick sneak peek:

What is this year's Campaign all about?

Every year, the Prajnya 16 Days Campaign against Gender Violence brings together a mix of public events, workshops, seminars and other activities that take place across towns and even, media. This year, we wanted to make a shift away from the notion that the impetus for social change must come mainly from organisations like ours. We wanted to return ownership of campaigns like this to all citizens, to each of us, as individuals. We wanted to say, "No matter what you do, where you are, what your life is like, there is something you can do. And even if it is small, the small things add up!"

We invited 17 individuals to take the lead on this year's campaign by initiating activities and taking action within their immediate spheres. They are our Gender Equality Mobilisers, or as we like to call them, G.E.M.s. The G.E.M.s come from different walks of life; some are more famous than others. Each of them has found a way to show support for this cause--eliminating gender violence--in some way that is meaningful to them and that fits in with their everyday life.

Our SPOTLIGHT this year

This year, we are placing a spotlight on gender violence and public health with a series of programmes and conversations that make the case for getting gender and sexual violence onto the public health agenda as an urgent and legitimate issue.

There is uniform consensus that when a woman experiences violence of any kind, whether once or repeatedly, it has a definitive impact on her physical and mental health. There is considerable research that highlights the association between sexual violence and a long list of health outcomes including HIV infection, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), induced abortions, low birth weight, alcohol use, depression and suicide and physical injuries. Gender and sexual violence deny an individual the right to lead a healthy life, free of injury, illness and disease. There is therefore a real and urgent need to view violence against women as a public health issue, and not merely a criminal or law and order problem.

Programmes in this Spotlight section of the 2014 Campaign will focus on the following key questions:

• How can we build the capacity of health care professionals to respond to violence?
• What are some best practices of health care system responses to gender and sexual violence?
• How can we help establish a sustainable mechanism within the health system to respond to violence?

Resource Creation: 'Gender Violence: The Health Impact' - A Blog Symposium

Resource creation is one of the most important aspects of the Prajnya 16 Days Campaign against Gender Violence. Since 2012, the blog symposium has been an important part of this work. This blog symposium serves as a companion to the Spotlight segment. It seeks to frame gender-based violence in all its forms as a public health issue that affects all sections of the population and analyses its health impact from a physical, reproductive and psychological viewpoint. In addition, the symposium will critically examine the emergency health care responses and protocols that exist to combat gender and sexual violence including the attitudes of health care professionals with a gaze that moves from “what is” to “what should be” and locates this discussion within a framework that is firmly survivor-centric and rights-based.The posts will be featured on the GRIT blog, and indexed there and on the Campaign blog. Look out for them!

What can you do?

 We believe that change begins with each of us and small individual efforts make a large collective impact. If you would like to contribute to the Prajnya 16 Days Campaign, here are some ways to do so:

• Look at our Call for Individual Actions and pick what suits you best. We have many options that you can choose from: Starting from changing your profile picture on social media to our logo to locating and disseminating information on distress services in your city. Do ping us on Twitter or Facebook and tell us what your are doing. We would love to hear from you.
• You can also answer our Call for Videos and send us a  message saying NO to Gender Violence.

 We have some exciting times ahead. Do keep checking in!