Married at age 16, Ashalata Pandey of Ambajogai, a city of the temple known as the “Maternal Home of Education” in the Beed de Maharashtra, had to hide her face after her husband went to a religious journey one day, which she never returned.
“Are you not sad because he left you?” “How can you simply move on?”
These were just some of the questions with which the young mother of two children was bombarded on her way to work in an NGO that obtained a meager monthly salary of RS 800, to raise awareness about a variety of issues, from the rights of the rights of women to reproductive health.
Chopped by such adverse comments, Ashalata resigned from his work. Without own property and without support from her in -laws, she assumed the work of an Asha worker. Covering his head, like a shroud, with the edge of his sari, took deserted paths on his way to work to make sure to keep those inquisitive looks at bay.
It was during one of those lonely walks to the work that Ashalata had a casual encounter with Chitratai.
Married at age 12 by an alcoholic father with a man who desperately seeks dow of greedy money when creating 14 savings. groups that charged a fixed interest rate of 2%.
Encouraged by Chitratai, Ashalata enrolled for the GRASES leadership development program (CLLDP) And on the third day of the course, he realized that he was entitled to certain rights, including the right to property of her husband.
“My father -in -law was the owner of a big house. I wanted co -owner, rightly. Now, in reality I do it, “says Ashalata, sharing her experience of being a ‘single woman) to one of the many vocal and local leaders of Ekal Mahila Sangathana (EMS), an organization of women in marathwada that galvanizes her 22,000 -The Marginated marginalized population of abandoned, separate and widows women to become agents of social change.
Ashalata is currently working on violence against women in Marathwada.
It started a decade ago for 27 single women in Beed, Latin, Osmanabad and Nanded, the rustic western Maharashtra belt -ems -today has almost 22,000 members.
Having rescued mass of single women from social stigma, unemployment and domestic violence, EMS is one of the more than 500 organizations in Maharashtra and Rajasthan that have been provided by the non -profit organization. Choir India.
“Choir means ‘Jyanche Prashna Tyonche Netrutva’ (the question is the same as the truth). The impulse to start the change should come from the inside,” says Dr. Sujata Khandekar, founder of the 34 -year -old holistic community development NGO .
Formed in 1989 by people of privileged origins, Choir became “an organization of the people, with people not as beneficiaries but as leaders of the organization”, as expresses by Mahendra Rokade, the director of Chorus.
In the last three decades, their efforts in Maharashtra and Rajastán rural and urban have created more than 1,688 “Base leaders”, of which 69% are women who include trans women.
Most of these manufacturers of land changes come from notified and denotified tribes, backward classes, minorities and other marginalized communities. These leaders, between 20 and 50, now address issues that range from gender rights to forest rights.
“Since women are constantly and constantly denied permission to do things from childhood and punished for transgressing those limits, later in their lives, women themselves begin to believe that they are minor human,” explains Khandekar.
Extracted for two decades, such ideas raided the way for the basco leadership training program (GLDP): a curriculum that encompasses skills, such as defense and constitutional rights, inspired by the philosophy of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire de ‘ awareness’. Meanwhile, EMS, who began working to guarantee security and access to government schemes for single women in areas where they were seen as “products at stake”, has now percolated in Rajasthan Remote where Teena Rawat, which survived two suicidal attempts after her husband after her husband. He abandoned her, now raye proudly inside an audience room where she defends herself as a lawyer. “If you had not abandoned it,” the judge told her ex -husband against whom she had presented five cases, “this woman would have spent all her life following you in a Ghoonghat. Instead, she is now a lawyer. Look how little you have achieved and How much he has done with his life. ”
Choir recently launched the Grassroots leadership of the ATTA Deep Academy in Mumbai as an GLDP extension. “‘Deep atta means self -control,” says Khandekar.
The arrival of four trans women has expanded the choir lens in gender issues. Case studies in their annual 2023 report point to how issues addressed by women’s leaders transcend gender.
Durga de Udaipur -who learned to open and operate a Facebook account during his companionship, sailed casually one day when he faced a government website that lists the names of 42 villagers who had received money to build cattle sheds. “None of the interested persons even knew that their requests had been approved,” Durga recalls, who downloaded the receipts and armed with those impressions, the villagers then pressurized the Sarpanch to give them their legitimate part.
That is the change. That’s power …
➤ 500 base organizations with which Coro has worked in Maharashtra and Rajasthan
➤ 249 of 358 Tehsils that Coro has reached in Maharashtra
➤ 122 of 390 Talukas that Coro has reached in Rajasthan
➤ In the last 15 years, GLDP has generated 1,688 community leaders in Maharashtra and Rajasthan
➤ 3 million lives played 3,224 villages covered in Maharashtra
➤ Over time, initiatives evolved from leadership programs and became independent processes
➤ 268 women (83 Sarpanch and 38 deputies of Sarpanch) and 217 men of several chorofacilitated campaigns have been chosen in recent local local government elections
➤ 22 leaders of the PLDP in Maharashtra who work on the community forest rights and acquired 1.73 Lakh acres of forest lands in 121 villages in Vidarbha
➤ The ‘Right Campaign to Pee’, that the Lobbies for Hygienic Urinaries for Women have now played 9 Lakh lives in Maharashtra
➤ 1,617 villages covered in Rajasthan
➤ The campaign on ‘Property Rights the same for women’ is underway in the Konkan region and is spreading through Maharashtra. 84 leaders and 39 organizations are working in the campaign in 96 villages in 17 districts of Maharashtra
