CENTRE FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH

As I write the note for the first quarter of this year and look back to the last three months in our fight for relevant and pertinent changes for the girls and women of the country, the world has been grappling with a pandemic. As we experience the effects of Covid-19 and follow the guidance of state health officials global medical bodies, unfortunately what has become evident is that discrimination against women does not stop, not even during a pandemic.

At CSR, our Crisis Intervention Centre Counsellors identified areas where there was a complete lack of supplies and collected data of landless labourers and their families who were having difficulties is accessing these facilities. We were able to hold small food distribution drives to provide families with dry food items in Mahipalpur, Rangpuri and Harijan Basti. Our team has been conducting telephonic outreach to all the 5 districts of our Sports for Empowering Girls program and were informed about lack of facilities in Gurugram. In collaboration with a local based NGO Mera Parivaar, food distribution that included bananas and milk for nutrients have started circulation. As individual members of this society, we have been connecting with local RWA’s and helping in any way possible. We would also like to urge our readers and supporters to reach out and provide help in the form of donation or outreach and ensure that we take care of our community.

Though these are hard and challenging times where fear and anxiety is rampant, the virus has had a more insidious effect on our advocacy and mobilization-based nature of work. The need of the hour is for all of us to come together, take care of one and another, and be united in spreading positivity at this time. In accordance with the directives from the government of India, my team at Centre for Social Research took prompt action and initiated work from home before the official Ministry guideline. We have maintained the various projects through daily video-conferencing and using social media as a strong tool for continuous awareness and execution.

With the way the world is facing global calamities and environmental disparity, our Gender, Water and Climate Change is focused on highlighting the effect climate change has on women, and how local SHG’s can work with the women of the community to promote water conservation. This quarter we continue our project to enhance women’s leadership capacity in water conservation and to promote women-friendly solutions for the climate crisis through Gender, Water and Climate Change Department’s women’s leadership and water conservation project in five villages of San-ganer, Rajasthan and SHG’s for sustainable water resource management and restoration of water resources in Alwar, Rajasthan.

Through our inclusion in the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao initiative, we continue to host advocacy and expert group meetings to promote quality education as a right for girls. Our focus on gender-critical districts to curb sex-selection led to various expert group meetings, rallies and our collaboration with the Vanishing Girls Campaign by ADF India to conduct a Judicial Symposium in Mahendragarh. Keeping in mind the importance of equal extra-curriculur activities for the development and ad-vancement of individual personalities, Sports for Empowering Girls in 5 Gender-Critical Districts of Haryana by organising district-level matches and in Kurukshetra and Mahendragarh is crucial in encouraging traditional households into enrolling their girls in sports activities, not only for physical advancement but also to develop their individual personalities.

This year, aligned with International Women’s Day celebrations, and our firm belief that gender-sensitised policing is the right of every individual, we continued with our training division under which the Gender Training Institute (GTI) conducted trainings on gender-sensitisation and the Pre-vention of Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act, 2013.

One of the major initiative in this quarter was the successful organisation of a Health Camp in Ut-tam Nagar. We have always reiterated that women’s health, especially in working-class areas, is often neglected in the favour of treatment of men as more essential. The Health Camp organised by our Crisis Intervention Centre in collaboration with various doctors and partners who donated sanitary napkins and spectacles for distribution, was able to provide free healthcare services to more than 1,000 community members.

Our venture into promotion of non-traditional livelihoods for women and to foster women’s economic empowerment, growth and personality development through the Skills based training programs has seen the successful completion of the third batch of the Office Assistant Training program and has been extremely fruitful in providing quality education to the trainees and provided them with excellent job opportunities in various reputed institutions. With our goal to achieve a gender-equitable society, this year we are working towards building a Co-Ed Skills Development Program to create an environment where both women and men can get equal training opportunities.

With the way the world is changing, and now most of the world’s population conducting their daily home and work routines online, it has become evident that the internet is not a luxury but a necessity. As a reflection of our physical existence. the violence propagated against women in physical spaces has also bled into the online world. As part of the review of the Beijing +25 Action Agenda, our agenda was to explore current developments and challenges of protecting women’s human rights in the online space. Since 2015, we launched various online safety programs to support women who use the online spaces as liberating and a platform for self-expression, and worked towards making the online space safe and responsible. Though the CSW64 stands cancelled due to Covid-19, we took our Global Policy Dialogue and hosted our panel discussion online with panelists that included Swati Bhise, Dr. Marlyn Tadros and Dr. Shruti Kapoor.

Lastly, at a time when social isolation and working from home has become our norm, it is pertinent to take care of our mental health as well as our physical health. At CSR, our daily log-in meetings are not just professional, work agenda discussions; but a small way to connect with each other and simply have a conversation about how we are all coping while experiencing the effects of a global pandemic. I want to urge all of our readers, trainers, supporters, partners trainers, and especially the women of our community and across the world, to please stay at home, stay safe, and to use the online space for connecting and creating a circle of empathy around our planet.

The Gender, Water, Climate Change department, in collaboration with our funding partners RITES India Ltd. and our local partner GVNML, conducted the Basic and Technical Trainings as part of the project titled “Women’s Leadership and Water Conservation: Capacity-Building and Infrastructure Development in Five Villages of Sanganer, Rajasthan”.

Keeping in mind its effectiveness, it was decided for the Basic Training, held on 11th & 12th January, 2020, to be residential in nature, therefore increasing the opportunity for rapport building with the beneficiaries. Throughout the two days of the Basic Training, the SHG women were engaged in various activities based on topics such as the social nature of gender, water conservation, and the role of SHGs in village development.

The Technical Training, which was a two-day event, held on 9th & 10th February, 2020, was residentially conducted in Laporiya village in the Dudu district of Rajasthan. Mr. Jagveer Singh, our Technical Expert, elaborated on topics such as water conservation and management over the course of two days. The training was conducted in the local dialect for the participants’ better understanding on technical subjects.

After the successful completion of the two capacity building trainings, we are all set to commence work at the site for the project. Through this project, two water conservation infrastructures are being built in Sanganer – a Kund and a Nadi. All the five villages under this project were taken into consideration in the building of these infrastructures. With the Bhumi Pujan on 26th March, 2020, we look forward to the infrastructural development and hand holdings in the upcoming months!

SHGs for Sustainable Water Resource management and Restoration of Water Resources, Alwar, Rajasthan, 2020

We are happy to announce our extended partnership with Honda2wheelers for the project titled - SHGs for Sustainable Water Resource management and Restoration of Water Resources, Alwar, Rajasthan. This project aims at working with 40 Self Help Group women from two villages, Dhadikar and Hazipur, in the Umaren Block of Alwar district, and capacitating them to make them water conservation leaders in their communities. It also involves infrastructure development through restoration / reparation / construction of new water sources, to be decided through a thorough needs assessment, all set to be conducted at the end of March, 2020.

These projects could not have been possible without the support of our funding partners - RITES India Ltd. and Honda2wheelers, along with our local partner GVNML. We thank them for their unending support in helping us achieve our goals!

CSR has been implementing the Phase-2 of the programme; “Sports for Empowering Girls in 5 Gender-Critical Districts of Haryana” since 2019 in collaboration with the Australian High Commission, New Delhi.

We commenced the year 2020 by conducting our first Hockey match of Phase 2 at Kurukshetra University in the month of February. We witnessed a neck to neck hockey competition between the teams from Kurukshetra University and Shahabad Girl’s Hockey Academy. On this occasion, we had amongst us the Dr. Dinesh Singh Rana; Director Sports and Physical Education, Kurukshetra University and Mr. Yashbir Singh; District Sports and Youth Officer to felicitate the players.

We are ecstatic to share that we kick-started the distribution of nutritional Intake for the girl who have enrolled with us in Mahendragarh and Kurukshetra district of Haryana. Under this initiative, they will be receiving banana and milk every day after their practice session until the end of our program.

For the upcoming weeks; we have scheduled a District level Hockey match in Gurugram, following which we will be providing nutritional intake to the participants. Next, we will be conducting an enrollment drive and hockey match in the district of Ambala. By the end of the next quarter, we will be conducting zonal level matches for both Volleyball and Hockey, wherein the girls’ sports players will receive sports equipment in addition to certificates and medals.

“I am a 11th standard student of Government Senior Secondary School in Gurugram. I stay 10 km away from the stadium yet I make it a point to come for practice every day. The coaches are very supportive but the stadium does not have all the facilities that we require, like, the quality of turf is not good, we are not provided with a kit to practice and no nutrition is given to us. I am happy to hear that your organization will be providing us with some nutrition.” Bharti, Hockey Player

The year 2020 began with the successful completion of our third batch of the Office Assistant Training programme and conducted their certification ceremony. Dr. Ranjana Kumari, Director, Centre for Social Research felicitated the ceremony and commended the pass out trainees for t heir achievements and securing job opportunity after the completion of the training program. CSR aims to foster women’s economic empowerment, growth, personality development and their full participation in the society through this Skill based training program. We try to provide women and young girls with the opportunities in the non-traditional sector and break the stereotypes.

Our Skill program team has worked relentlessly towards providing the placement opportunities ofto the certified trainees and its remarkable to share that all the trainees were provided with the excellent job opportunities in various reputed offices/institutions.

CSR has geared up to bring in its self-sustainable model of the Office Aassistant Co-ed training program which will give an equal opportunity to both men and women to attain a qualitative training programme with secured job opportunities. We have received several feedbacks from our women trainees that their husbands, friends and brothers are also interested in the training program. Most of the women trainees also shared that they are often being told about how this training program has helped them in their overall personality development and boosted their confidence level.

Our team is rigorously working in the grass root to mobilise both men and women to enroll themselves for this course as we are scheduled to begin the 1st batch in May, 2020 tentatively.

When it comes to participation of women in the political sphere, Indian representation has been consistently poor at the national and state level. The Women’s Reservation Bill was introduced specifically to increase female participation and encourage women to enter roles of leadership and decrease gender-based discrimination. The 17th Lok Sabha elections in 2019, proudly boasted 77 women parliamentarians by achieving the highest percentage of women in politics, but this number does not satisfy the years of struggle and discrimination that the Bill has witnessed, and even today unfortunate that there has been no discussion about the minimal number of women in the Parliament and women’s lack of representation is not being addressed.

Our tangible efforts of advocacy with present parliamentarians, partner NGO’s, and various stakeholders continues as we garner more and more support for the passage of the Bill. This quarter, we collaborated with various influencers and encouraged more dialogue through social media platforms for awareness and as an educational toolkit.

With the aim to improve gender balance in politics, we have hosted various mobilisation events, outreach programs and conducted surveys, both offline and online, and have successfully proven that an increased number of women in politics promotes women’s issues, educational programs and health policies. Our on-going signature campaign has successfully gathered more than 65,000 signatures in support of the Bill and we continue to receive more everyday.

Centre for Social Research, in collaboration with Facebook piloted Social Surfing in 2015 to encourage the use of Facebook as a platform of sharing knowledge, safe and responsible use and using the platform for positive social change. Through the duration of the project, we were able to conduct almost 500 workshops and outreach to 20,000 students. The success and motive of Social Surfing has now led us to partner with Facebook once again under their “We Think Digital” initiative.

In our efforts to promote the good and responsible use of social media, and to keep the online spaces safe, Dr. Ranjana Kumari was invited to be a part of the Global Safety Advisory Board of Facebook, at their annual meeting in Washington D.C. This meeting has been subsequently followed by two online gatherings to further discuss the agenda.

In February, nine members from the CSR team were invited to participate in the Training for Trainers programs at the Facebook office, Gurgaon. The training session highlighted the importance of verifying the content that we like or share, different ways in which online harassers can use our private information, Facebook policies and reporting techniques that can facilitate quick action against an online attacker, and ways in which we can spot and demote fake news.

In the first quarter of the new decade, the world population fell victim to the advent of the Corona Virus. The virus has not just affected the health sector, but has hit countries across the world like a tidal wave. We in India are now in total lockdown till further instructions from our Government. These are hard and challenging times, but the need of support and unity is the strongest yet. CSR took prompt and early action against the rise of cases in India and announced work from home for its employees before the government made it mandatory, but our work continues. And it continues now more than ever! With the whole world in constraints, we’ve seen people socially participate in multiple activities through the World Wide Web. What we’re doing is focusing on our outreach work, but also the mental health of our employees, field trainers, counsellors, and most importantly the women we work for everyday.

Our projects are being handled through Zoom calls within the departments, and with our partners. We also do a daily-log of our activities and have created little work spaces in our homes. This turbulent time has also highlighted how the internet is not a privilege but an essential part of our daily lives. With most of our activism now online, we are regularly using social media platforms to connect with organisations, women, digital users across the world and maintaining a solid connect in these times of disconnect.

What we’ve found helpful is to create a daily to-do list. This helps in maintaining a healthy routine and to keep your mind focused. It is also rewarding to be able to maintain contact with your fellow colleagues through video/audio chat and to create the same work environment.

At a time when social isolation has become the way of life, it is pertinent to take care of your mental health as well as your physical health. Through our online projects, we have always implored people to reach out and seek help. It’s okay to talk to your friends/family about how this period is affecting you personally. It is also a hard time to be completely productive with the information overload. What’s helpful is to understand when to distance from social media and the vast majority of articles about the Virus. With the way technology is and keeps evolving, working from home is a privilege and can be a lot of fun too! This time allows for more creativity, more ideating opportunities and so much access to the outside world that before we know it, this too shall pass.