By Manak Matiyani | Project Leader
Gauri is a 15 year old community leader who currently studies in class IX and is living in Sunder Nagar Nursery, an urban slum in Delhi. She has been associated with our organisation from a very young age and has participated in numerous leadership building projects throughout her time with us. Some of these include the Safety Audit - led by youth leaders in 3 urban slum communities of Delhi to identify the existing gaps in the services and physical infrastructure using a smartphone app, Jagrik project - a nationwide initiative that aims to build young people’s awareness of their fundamental rights and duties and most recently with the Feminists for Change programme at TYPF.
This project attempts to provide a bridge between organisation-led programmatic interventions and movement-building spaces. The project puts feminist leadership into practice to build young women's perspectives and analyses of feminist leadership together to address one common challenge: public harassment. Using an arts-based method, these young women use forum theatre and dance movement therapy to build their leadership and begin conversation within their community on these issues.
Initially, Gauri was very afraid of speaking in public, her engagement with the various leadership programmes has built her confidence and has made her an active advocate in her community. In a recent project, Gauri along with her peers documented and mapped out 'safe' and 'unsafe' areas using cameras in their communities. The project concluded with an exhibition of the team’s findings, which they used to advocate with community members and with the local authorities for safer public spaces and improved sanitation. Even though she was quite nervous, with the support from her peers and with the confidence she has acquired, she went up on stage to speak about the existing gaps in terms of safety and sanitation across her community.
With your support, we wish to continue engaging community leaders like Gauri in leadership programmes to build their confidence in order to advocate for their rights. Thank you very much for expressing interest in our work and in our programmes and we hope you continue to do so!
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