Youth for Sustainability Dialogues is an online platform for Youth Leaders from across the world to come together and discuss their work in local communities on a global level on particular SDG themes. Another session of Y4SD was organised on 11 December 2020, on SDG 5: Youth Against Gender Based Violence.
This year is like no other. Even before COVID-19 hit, violence against women and girls had reached pandemic proportions. Globally, 243 million women and girls were abused by an intimate partner in the past year. Meanwhile, less than 40 per cent of women who experience violence report it or seek help. In April 2020, as the pandemic spread across the world, the UN Secretary-General called for “peace at home”, and 146 Member States responded with their strong statement of commitment. In recent months 135 countries have strengthened actions and resources to address violence against women as part of the response to COVID-19. Yet, much more is needed.
For the 16 Days of Activism, UN Women handed over the mic to survivors, activists and UN partners on the ground, to tell the story of what happened after COVID-19 hit. At this Y4SD session, we heard from the youth, as we welcomed our participants from India and Nepal.
The expert for the session was Pille Tsopp, Vice President of Women Against Violence Europe (WAVE). The session was moderated by Vrinda Agarwal, Co Founder of Democracy Live. The participants of the session were Yukta Nagpal, Priyanshi Aggarwal from Connecting Dreams Foundation, CVS Chapter and Kaustuv Mani Pokhrel from MasterPeace Nepal/ DajuVai. We had special guests of honor from Chhanv Foundation – Anshu Rajput, Pramodini Roul (Acid Attack Survivors) and Ajeet Singh (Director of Education & Training). Chhanv Foundation has been working with acid attack survivors and helping them gain employment.
The session began with Vrinda Agarwal introducing the participants to the topic of the dialogue. She talked about the situation of gender based violence during COVID and drew attention to worsening situation of violence against women at home. She talked about the UN Women campaign – 16 Days of Activism, of which the Y4SD event was a part, by giving a platform to youth and survivors to share their side of the story.
MasterPeace Nepal/DajuVai –
Hami DajuVai (Nepali Brothers) is a feminist organisation that registered themseves as an NGO in April 2019. They have been working for Gender Equality under the 3 thematic areas :
- Promoting Men Engagement to end Gender-Based Violence
- Increasing Awareness among Men on the harmful effects of Patriarchy on their lives
- Creating Awareness regarding Violence against Boys
Their main primary focus is SDG 5, which aims to end all forms of gender based violence and gender inequality. They also focus on other SDGs such as SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth and SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities which are cross cutting with their primary goal. They developed a concept called the weMEN club, which sounds like ‘women’ when put together. They wanted to bring in young boys and men and make them aware about gender based violence. They started within their districts, got in touch with their municipality and schools to form these clubs. Each club has 7-10 members, with 3 key members in the club – a Club Leader, an Empowerment Incharge and a Media Incharge. Initially they brought in experts from different fields to orient the clubs towards the initiative. On going back to their schools, the students started the dialogue and discussion in their schools, raised awareness about issues pertaining to gender and organised different events to promote gender equality. On International Women’s Day a rally was organised by men to show that they are allies of the women.
In the future, the weMEN Club wants to bring in a female perspective in the club by engaging girls and women. They aim to scale up the programme to different districts with the help of the municipality and government support. They also plan to partner with the government agencies to ensure the sustainability of the project and will thus be working towards that. They feel that sensitization of the media is very important as the media has been seen to show discriminatory gender norms. Thus they want to tie up with different media and sensitise them to the issue.
Connecting Dreams Foundation, CVS Chapter –
Connecting Dreams Foundation, CVS Chapter was initiated in 2018 among college students to work towards local SDG based challenges. They started the project Aashayein with the tagline, ‘Acid on Face, not on Dreams’. India has the highest rate of acid attacks in the world, faced by women when they reject sexual advances or a marriage proposal. The women are often shunned from society and not given any opportunities. Looking at the state of these attacks in India, CDF CVS decided to work with acid attack survivors. The project tries to bring change in the lives of the survivors by helping them explore their interests and develop soft skills to support it. The project began with field visits to the houses of a few survivors with the help of Chhanv Foundation to understand the problem closely. The team of CVS found that they had aspirations and decided to provide them training on basic dance skills, makeup, communication skills and social media marketing.
They collaborated with Chhanv Foundation and Atijeevan Foundation to get in touch with survivors and help them learn the necessary skills. They trained the acid attack survivors on video editing skills and provided them with an understanding of various social media handles. They collaborated with Glam Factory by Komal Soni to provide online make-up training to the survivors. They also collaborated with Kaanchi R. Gupta for a fun dance session for them. They also collaborated with Atijeevan Foundation and Dr. Swati Chandra, a professor of Delhi University to work on improving communication skills. During the pandemic they also arranged a quarantine talent show with categories in art, dance, singing and music.
The team looks forward to reaching out to as many women as possible, who are survivors of such acid attacks and provide them opportunities commensurate with their talent.
After the presentations, Vrinda took up the conversation with two acid attack survivors from Chhanv Foundation who were present for the dialogue. After the tragic incident, they have been working with the Chhanv Foundation as Reach Out Associates for other acid attack survivors in the SAA (Stop Acid Attack) Campaign. Starting with Pramodini Raul, Vrinda asked her a question to understand the reason for such attacks. Pramodini replied that in a society where beauty is given a lot of importance, men feel that they can destroy a woman’s life by disfiguring her face. Further, men that are perpetrators of such crime are readily accepted in society whereas the survivors are shunned from society and deprived of any opportunities. Vrinda also talked to Anshu Rajput to understand what her role at Chhanv Foundation entails. Anshu has been part of Chhanv Foundation since 2015 where she is part of the Reach Out department. The main purpose of this department is to support a woman once she has been attacked as there is often a lack of facilities and emotional support for women. They also ensure that the women get treatment in rehabilitation centres, get the appropriate compensation and also ensure their education does not stop. She is also working as the PR manager for a new project started by Chhanv Foundation to provide employment opportunities to the survivors during the pandemic.
Pille Tsopp took the stage to appreciate the efforts of the youth as well as the Chhanv Foundation whom she called inspirational. She said that she is not as brave as the survivors, commending their efforts and bravery on being so vocal and taking actions on the issue. She drew parallels between survivors of domestic violence and acid attack survivors, stating from her experience that many are unable to find a reason to continue life. But being vocal about such issues and providing inspiration to others like themselves, as is being done by Pramodini and Anshu can be a source of motivation for survivors. Pille also applauded the genius of the DajuVai’s weMEN conference as it targets patriarchy right at a young age and engages men in the discussion. She also agreed with Kaustuv’s analysis of the media as a perpetrator of gender equality and cited some instances from her experience. But she sees a spark of hope as she has seen that the media is learning, with voices being raised on these issues. She also stated the importance of government support in such initiatives to continue the good work.
The session ended with a question-answer session by the experts and a vote of thanks to the participants, organizing partners and the participants for their valuable time.
