Soochna Seva celebrates Women’s Day with special baithaks

On March 8, 2016, Soochna Seva commemorated ‘International Women’s Day’ at all its Soochna Seva kendras. A range of activities took place at various target locations such as aaganwadi centres, primary health centres, community health centre, government schools and gram choupal. These activities were conducted with diverse audience such as students, school principals, aaganwadi workers, ASHA workers, self-help groups, villagers and the pradhan (village head). The team also launched a day-long campaign on its social media platforms to share women-oriented impact stories under the Soochna Seva project with as many people as possible.

We will strive to continue our best efforts in the forthcoming months to engage more and more people by empowering them so that they too can empower others.

International Women’s Day is celebrated worldwide to mark women’s enormous success and contribution to the humanity. The day signifies the plight of their lives and how their survival is being ensured via empowerment. Women empowerment is an issue recognised globally and efforts have been marked continuously by UN agencies, organisations, civil society/NGOs in many countries. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls’ is one of goals mentioned in the new sustainable development agenda, comprising of 17 global goals. Years have passed since the launch of MDGs (2000) but there are countries with vey minimum progress towards attaining the target. India is one of those countries lagging behind to meet the goals, the deadline of which ended in 2015.

DEF has been tirelessly working since 2002 for the empowerment of people in the difficult areas of 22 states and 80 districts of India. Since its inception, the organisation has impacted the lives of more than 1,50,000 individuals among whom women have been benefitted in big numbers.

Soochna Seva is one of its biggest projects with a target of reaching three lakh beneficiaries directly and indirectly by 2018. DEF launched this programme in collaboration with the European Union in January 2014 with an aim to spread awareness, using ICT/non-ICT tools, about existing public schemes among the deprived sections of the society to enable them to derive benefits from the same. In addition to empowering the masses with information, Soochna Seva has set its focus on capacity building of local communities, groups and citizens and advance cooperation between the stakeholders and local administration to develop an operative framework for public scheme information dissemination and entitlement. The project has been successfully working for the last two years towards serving communities in making them aware of their rights and entitlements with regards to public schemes.

Below are glances from the acitivities organised on ground on International Women’s Day:

A community meeting was organized in Gunogi Udykot village in Chamba block of Tehri Gharwal district, Uttarakhand, to discuss the entitlements and rights for women and the impact of digital literacy on women empowerment.
A community meeting to discuss the role of women in development and the importance of skill development training was organized in Dighiya panchayat, Bero block of Ranchi district in Uttarakhand. The discussion was attended by 40-50 villagers.
A rally organised in Tamedi village where women shared their views on what it means to be a woman.
‘Sashakt nari se banega sashakt samaj’ slogans were raised at a campaign in Burmu, Ranchi district of Jharkhand.
Inspirational movies were screened for women at the Siwana Soochna Seva Kendra.
An awareness camp was organized at the Government Girls Senior Secondary School in Siwana block of Barmer to encourage girls to pursue higher education.
At a small camp at Itki’s Soochna Seva Kendra, the village head filled up forms for the construction of toilets in the village.
Women gathered in a chaupal in Kaloni Pathar village to understand the importance of International Women’s Day.
Women at Chamba’s Soochna Seva Kendra mapped day-to-day issues they face such as patriarchy, lack of decision-making power, inequality and reserved mindset, among others.
A meeting with SHGs was held in Sohanttu block to discuss the importance of empowerment and education in the life of women.