Violence free villages, violence free country, rural women on the move...From Pam Rajput

Dear Members, 

9 Dec 2013: We had a successful first day in Sitapur. The inaugural session was webcasted live so I am hoping that many more people had an opportunity to get connected with us. It is my belief that unless we are connected at the grassroots, development process shall remain exclusive and not inclusive that we all envision.

Our coming to Sitapur is part of a learning process, that we have initiated and hope to replicate in many other districts in the country. By encouraging interaction among elected women representatives, whom we consider empowered enough (if that were not so, they would not have been able to take that first step to be out of their homes and get elected as people’s representatives), our task now is to enable the rural women further so that they are able to play their interventionist role more effectively in addressing various issues at the local level including violence against women.

The first day, besides the inaugural session, encouraged EWRs to get into smaller groups and discuss their perception of violence, what kind of cases of violence they receive, how do they address these cases, do they face any challenges, etc. The EWRs opened up after initial hesitation to discuss issues that impact even their day to day living.  On ‘violence against women’, there appeared to be a unanimity that it is difficult to communicate or go to Police with cases of violence. Why the system is often unapproachable, came up as a major concern.

Being one of the advisory members of the Gender Community, I am happy that the Community is using all its multi-media forums to make Sitapur event reach out to many others. We hope members will follow Sitapur closely and come up with their suggestions, experiences and share it with us. It will add to our work with EWRs.

As I said yesterday our vision is, Violence free villages, violence free country, rural women on the move…and we intend to be with them, and with their strength and commitment to carry forward rather accelerate the wave of change.