Gender Equality India Project #21778

Economic Sustainability for Kranti's Future

by Kranti

Project Report | Oct 16, 2017
Closing down Vakoloft....

By Shweta Katti | Krantikari

Dear Friends & Supporters of Vakoloft,

We hope this message finds you well! We are sorry to be writing this report to bring you some bad news....but as inevitably happens with all of Kranti's homes, we were kicked out of this space recently. Three months ago, we had to move to a new location and consequently had to close down Vakoloft. Our new space is in a flat on the top floor of a building, and we have already held a couple events in the new flat. We are thinking about how to continue some of the amazing programs and energy that we had at Vakoloft, and we hope we will be reporting some new ideas to you soon.

In the meantime, we must close down this project since we are no longer located in this space. Thank you all for supporting our work at Vakoloft and making the income generation possible there. In some months we raised enough funds to pay half of our rent, which was unimagineable before you all helped make Vakoloft possible. :) Again, thank you for all of your support and we hope to update you with our next income generation program soon!

Sincerely,
Shweta

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Aug 19, 2016
The Vakoloft

By Shweta Katti | Krantikari

World Champion beatboxer Bellatrix

Dear Vakoloft & Kranti Supporters,

I hope this message finds you all well! I am one of the Krantikaris and I'm writing to update you about Vakoloft. You guys have all been supporting Vakoloft, which was an income generation venture for Kranti. It has been very up and down, but I wanted to write and update you about everything happening here. My name is Shweta and I've been at Kranti for four years....and I've been at Vakoloft pretty much from the beginning. One of our staff, Melissa, designed this space a few months ago, and the most interesting thing has been watching the ideas, events, people and space evolve since then.

First, the good news! Vakoloft has been an amazing, amazing asset for many reasons. Particularly for media, school, meetings and community events. Since we have a tin roof on the top floor of Kranti's space (which is where the classroom is), it was unbearably hot during the summer months, and we held Kranti school in Vakoloft for nearly four months! There are several groups that started using Vakoloft for meetings, including women's rights groups, non-profit organizations and even a poetry club. We've also had some major events happen here, including concerts, plays and even hosted 15 university students from the US! But I think one of the most fun and interesting things that happened for us this year was all the media events and shootings that took place here the past six months. This includes an awesome, awesome video that we Kranti girls made to fight stigma against dark skin. (Link below!) It was just a lot of fun to see the newspapers, online videos and even TV programs where Vakoloft was always in the background. :)

Of course we faced many difficulties as well....there are normal logistical (Indian!) problems like occasional water and electricity outages. But we have also had a really, really hard time with the weather - it was an exceptionally hot this year in India, and some of our regular groups ended up not using the space for a couple months due to the heat. It is much better since the monsoon started and people are needing indoor spaces again! :P Overall, we haven't made a lot of money, but we have definitely covered the costs of running Vakoloft, and we've had a lot of fun along the way. For the next couple months, we are focusing on getting back all of our lost summer clients, fixing the electricity issues and raising enough funds to design and roll out Kranti merchandise.

We cannot thank you enough for all you have done to make our Vakoloft experiment feasible! It takes time to design, create, implement, evaluate and update things when you start an experiment....and we would not be able to do this without you. I know many of you are not in India, but it would be a privilege to have you visit Vakoloft if you are ever here. Thank you so much for your support...and for reading this!

Sincerely,

Shweta

Love to celebrate our birthdays at Vakoloft

Drum Circles are our favorite :D

SAS students at Kranti

Links:

Embrace Your Color :)

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Jan 15, 2016
VakoLoft's Humble Beginnings

By Melissa | VakoLoft Events Coordinator

Dia de los Muertos @ VakoLoft

We started Vakoloft to not only give the Kranti home an event space that we could use for classes and Bollywood dance parties, but also one that could provide Kranti with a venue that could generate it's own income to help sustain the expenses of Kranti and the home itself. Our ideas were grand, but our budget and reach were much less than we had hoped. Still, after some months of patience and perseverance, we're proud to say that we've had a few successful bookings for the venue and even some cool workshops planned for 2016!

With the initial money we collected, we were able to pay for the paint & supplies to transform the donated wood drawers into our library dubbas. We also bought some really great fan/lights that help to circulate the air and provide warm lighting to the space, since it lacks windows. We even bought materials to host Mumbai's first Dia de los Muertos event. We learned about Mexican culture and the Day of the Dead celebration and then created our own Kranti version to share with the local community! Of course, it gave us another excuse to play great music and to dance! Some photos are attached so you can see the event activities.

We also have on-going bookings from fantastic local groups like The Poetry Club - Mumbai and the NSPA (Natural Streets for Performing Arts). Our own Sheetal Jain has even used the space for a Krantikari drum circle. Plus, instead of going out this year, we celebrated Shweta Katti's 21st birthday in the space. We choreographed a dance routine just to celebrate her special day!

The space is still growing and changing slowly. We have hopes that if we have more events over the next few months, we can add a small kitchen for dining pop-ups and some better seating to host game and movie nights. Thank you for contributing to help us create this fantastic space. We hope to share more good news with you in the future!

The Krantikaris' Favorite Dance Space

The Poetry Club - Mumbai @ VakoLoft

Sheetal's Drum Circle @ VakoLoft

Links:

Kranti's Event Space page, VakoLoft

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