Pratiti in Jaipur - March Meet Up and Sunil's letter

18th March, 2016 - Pratiti Jaipur - March One Day Meet Up

The Pratiti Jaipur cohort gathered for their monthly workshop and one day meet up on the 18th of March, 2016 at the Pravah Jaipur Initiative's premises. The day was designed to allow the participants to reflect on their experiences in the journey so far, share personal gendered experiences they may have come across since the last meet up and evaluate group-wise action project progress.

The team-wise sharing saw each organization team discuss about the work they had undertaken in their communities and the points at which they had to stretch or would need further help in. 

Priyanka and Mukesh, from Magic Bus, marked Pratiti Jaipur's first large scale on-ground intervention via an action project by successfully holding an event on the occasion of Women's Day on March 8th. Their narration:

“On the occasion of Women’s Day, as part of our action project for Pratiti, we organized a 2 hour program in the Nahargarh slum community, a community new to us and in which we had never worked in before.

Our objectives were:

• To inform the community members about the different kinds of gender based violence
• To initiate new thoughts and conversations about gender among the youth
• To learn ways to stay safe from gender based violence

We began mobilization conversation a few days prior to the program. Around 150 men, women and children from the community attended. We organized a ‘nukkad naatak’ on gender, post which we organized a few games which initiated long discussions and conversations with the audience regarding gender stereotypes and prevailing superstitions. The program was very well received and we were extremely proud to pull it off successfully”

Pratiti Jaipur participants from Magic Bus, Priyanka and Mukesh, held their action project intervention in the Nahargarh slum community on the occasion of Women's Day

Facilitating a discussion on gender with children and youth from the community

Girraj from the Smile Foundation narrated about his interactions with women and girls in the slum communities his organization regularly teaches in. He made use of tools and games to convey the concepts of gender and intends to hold such sessions every Sunday to eventually co-create a safe space for women to freely share their stories and experiences.

Ravi and Neetu from Vishakha shared how they had made considerable progress in their aim of initiating gender conversations among various sub groups in their communities. They had held separate discussions with boys and girls to introduce Vishakha and share about what they had learnt in Pratiti. They also held a camp with married girls and boys to gauge the issues they face.

Amitabh, Palak and Sunil from the Pravah Jaipur Initiative held conversations with their organization head on how best they could intervene on the topic of gender in different schools and colleges while also spreading Pravah's values of youth empowerment. They are currently in the process of designing workshops which facilitate conversations on gender roles and equality with youth in Jaipur. 

Hari and Apurva, participants from the Azad Foundation, shared how they had connected with local CBOs in the 3 bastis where they wanted to organize their action project around the theme of public space safety.  They also managed to get on board Focus Bharat news as their local media partner for their planned campaign.

In the subsequent sessions, participants learned how to facilitate by holding small sessions themselves, learnt about the importance of proper communication, collaboration and teamwork, and further refined their action plans for the coming months.

The day concluded with a popcorn session in which participants shared about their feelings and the areas where they feel they would need guidance in the coming days. Onwards and upwards to April!

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A letter from Sunil

Sunil, from Pravah Jaipur, wrote a beautiful little letter to the Pratiti team sharing his experiences in the journey thus far. 

Sunil (center) shares his thoughts about Pratiti with us through a letter

Hello Pratiti team,

Thanks for selecting me to work on Gender Based Violence. I have learned a lot of things about gender based violence, equality and equity, during the 3 day workshop. Before the workshop, I had a limited thought of gender and was also a bit sentimental and stereotypical. Now I am stopping this and becoming broad minded. My anger has always been my big weakness. But now I am able to overcome and decrease my anger. I hear each and every one from their heart and think about them and try to give them a right solution. I also like all the activities and games during the workshop. In the 3 day workshop I also learned how to take leadership and how to start a workshop and communicate with people. Overall the whole workshop was very beneficial for me.

The one day meetup in a month is also good for me. We recollect the things and activities that we have done during the 3 day workshop, collect our issues and decide to work on them. Me, Palak and Amitabh collected the information we wanted to work on. But in first meetup we were a little confused because we had a lot of questions and activities to do for our gender workshop. So after the first meetup, we were totally confused, but after that we talked to Amreen and decided to work on one issue by questionnaire and Café Mohalla and start our journey with Pratiti on gender with school students and different colleges and NGOs also. So before 2^nd meetup, we prepared a plan. The second meetup workshop was good for us because we were able to make a plan and were also able to collect some questionnaire and poster and letterhead for mobilization. Now I am a little bit afraid and nervous also about how we will manage it all. Both nervous and excited also.

Also thanks to our mentor Purvi who communicated with us and showed us a way to proceed. And also thanks to Aditya, Arushi and Somesh also. I hope this project is very beneficial for me. I will hear of lot of things and learn about leadership and I want to polish my soft skills and personality also. So it is very helpful for me for being a good human being. I will definitely give my hundred percent to fulfill this project. So please help me to do that. Overall the workshop and both the meetups were very beneficial for me. We will be starting our mission from 1^st of April. 

Thanks to you all,

By Sunil Kumar Bishnoi

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Be sure to follow the Pratiti blog for live updates from the Jaipur fellows as they work together against Gender Based Violence in the coming months!