By Yagna Parmar | Project Director
Dear friends,
Warm greetings from Vacha team. We hope all of you are safe and taking great care against the Pandemic. We are in a critical situation. Our Maharashtra State has 9 of the 10 worst affected districts in India. Partial lockdowns have already been ordered. We at Vacha have made preparations for going online and working from home but it will be difficult when our work is in 18 bastis (‘slums’). One of our community organisers is already hospitalised with a case of COVID 19. All hospital beds are full so admissions of new cases are difficult. We are in the process of providing technological aid to all staff members. It will be expensive but is much needed.
Despite the serious pandemic situation the programme participants have continued to organise special events like the release of their own newsletters and Women’s Day celebration actually or virtually as the circumstances permitted.
On the happier side, Sonal Shukla, Founder of Vacha and its Managing Trustee, has received two important awards this year. One is the Mahatma award for Social Good that she got on January 31, Mahatma Gandhi’s death anniversary, also known as the Martyrs’ Day, for her work on Gender Equality from an Aditya Birla Initiative non-profit (the Birlas were close to the Mahatma whose last public prayer was held at Birla House, Delhi) and another from Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, a major Germany based organisation that declared Sonal Shukla as the Feminist Icon from India for their Gender Justice Hub in Asia. More about the award can be accessed at https://india.fes.de/e/an-icon-of-the-womens-movement-in-india-and-across-the-globe-sonal-shukla . Vacha, a resource centre for women and girls, has also won two substantial prizes last year.
We are happy that Sonalbehn’s vision, hard work, dedication and personal sacrifice and her work as an activist, a writer and an initiator in Empowerment of Deprived girls are being appreciated. We are also happy we have been actively associated with her through Vacha’s programmes. We thank all of you for your support to our work.
“It is clear that the idea, ideals and pedagogic principles that govern the Vacha programme are shaped by three great socio-political movements aimed at transforming society. These include, Mahatma Gandhi’s concept of Basic Education. interpreted by the later Gandhian who initiated the Sarvodaya movement of socio-political transformation of the country after Independence; Paulo Freire’s participatory action research and ; the feminist pedagogic praxis. “(Quote from Vacha’s external evaluation report, 2019)
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