The last workshop of
our 2nd intervention with the women from various self groups in
Baghpat was strikingly different, as it marked a huge collaboration with three
different organizations Sahas Foundation, Deeprekha Samajik Sansthan and
Baghpat district administration. Sahas has been working in collaboration with
Baghpat district administration since July last year while with Deeprekha
samajik sansthan our collaboration is close to a year. We know how later work
but this was first time where we were gonna witness their work on the ground,
naturally we were all very excited!
Shivani Bajpai from Deeprekha was facilitating this session, it was her first
meet up with the women with whom we were engaging deeply for 2 weeks. She
slowly built her connect by building conversation of self-help group, its
structure, who is responsible for what, how is their experience being part of
these groups. The way the session proceeded generated so much energy and
excitement which translated in women who were then grouped to make diaries.
These diaries are beautiful and handy, who would thought that apart from
various nitty gritties it could be easy to make. The smile on the women faces
were worth capturing J
It just made me more
confident on the fact that when intentions are honest, nothing can stop in
building the community with so much trust and ultimately leading to skill
building in a village where women still find it difficult to get out of their
homes even for utmost necessities.
Since both Sahas and
Deeprekha samajik sansthan are gender organizations, it was a great opportunity
to sit together and have conversations around each other’s work, learn from
each other and engage in peer to peer learning. As an organization, we believe
a lot in sharing our stories, conversations through social media so that people
can understand and engage with us on gender issues, and seeing the kind of work
Deeprekha samajik sansthan has been doing, we believe that they are brilliant
in their work but it is not reaching out to many people. So we facilitated a
session on importance of social media, how to share stories and conversations
from the field, how to develop relationship with the viewers or followers on
social media and also helped them to construct their Facebook page.
Shivani from Deeprekha
samajik sansthan has deep knowledge of POCSO, and has been taking trainings on
the same in various communities, organizations and government body, while we
work on Child Sexual abuse hence she facilitated a session on understanding the
Law.
She first showed us clips from 2 films- Monsoon wedding and Highway where
the victim/survivor is taking on with the offender, followed by the explanations
on the basics and details of POCSO act. It was very engaging and overwhelming
session for us, because we could reflect both on work as well as personal
level- as in maybe there were situations where we had to pay attention but
somehow due to lack of knowledge and understanding we neglected it easily.
It
also made us think more deeply about our own childhood, the children in our
family and children living around us. The conversations began with the
professional arena but it went to the personal roads and at one time all the
boundaries dissipated where we became more aware, sensitive and determined to
deal with child sexual abuse.
On the next day, we
conducted the diary making session in Binaulli, the same place where we engaged
with 65 women on the issues of Gender, gender based violence, sexuality and
feminist leadership in July last year (our first intervention at Baghpat- so we
were very excited to see our familiar participants).
Here about 80 women had
gathered for the workshop, the feel and atmosphere was totally different. It
was very fascinating to see and co-facilitate with Shivani on diary making. There
was altogether different curiosity, excitement and deep sense of competition to
learn how to make diaries as it could be one of the potential source of
earning.
So we saw groups of 2, 3, 4,5 and many places single women trying
their hands on making diaries, we finally had about 30 diaries in the span of 2
hours! It was like a mad house where women were running from here and there,
collecting materials, sharing them, facilitators moving from one room to
another, supporting them in various process.
The next part was
crucial where the facilitator shared her feedback on the diaries, are they
saleable, or there are things that could improve, and also appreciating them
for their collaborative efforts. And as the session was reaching to its
closure, Chadani Singh, Chief development officer, Baghpat entered, she was
ecstatic to see the efforts invested by women, also invited their opinion on
whether they would like to see dairy making as one of the opportunity of
earning- to which women replied in “yes” and she immediately announced to open “Diary
making centre”
It was wonderful to see a positive
collaboration turning into reality where everyone’s effort translated into
skill building of women from various self-help groups. It was definitely a step
forward J
