Evolution of Women Empowerment @ Helping Brainz
The concept and the process of women empowerment is known as ‘Chayya‘ in HelpingBrainz.Org. Whenever we land in a rural area where the women rights are not given much importance. Helping Brainz started it’s propagation, on a sunny autumn of 2012. We took Women Safety and Empowerment as our first project.
Incidents which knocked us :
- When we approached Delhi’s first Women police station officer to file a compliant, she as well as Political party leader mentioned same lines, “every 7 days a lady is attacked, can you help them”, well we being immature however being fully covered with zeal and enthusiasm only gaped at their bloodless faces rather than answering or questioning them back.
- When we approached a women studies department as well as a Women’s college principal of Delhi university, they said that ‘you people are immature to work in this field, women safety requires documentation, presentations’ which made us confirmed that for these principals, educationists, women safety is just a topic to be covered in the text book.
- When we approached NGOs they need money to do campaigns.
We being helpless in this mission, ultimately thought of going for an operational research on the same topic & drafted a questionnaire and conducted a national level operational research on what women think about Women Safety, with a simple question, “what if you are followed by someone back home?” “what if you are grabbed from behind ?”, 76% of women whom we approached were clueless about their safety however 24 % answered that ‘we have the nearest police station’s number’, ‘we’ve pepper sprays’, ‘we know self defense techniques’. Though we’ve these self defensive techniques available with us, however will they be circumstantially active, eventually not, thus the only thing to be matured and corrected over here should be ‘the mentality of attacking-male community’, ‘proactive approach of the women’ and their ‘way of articulating themselves to a situation’.
Change Making Situation – Women Empowerment
In this juncture, Helping Brainz started their operations as a social media, a page, wherein we started with women safety campaigns and empowerment campaigns, whereas rather than conducting a ‘self-defense class’ or a ‘pepper-spray distribution’, we thus, concentrated on conducting ‘Experience Sharing Congresses’ wherein we invited,
- Women activists and researchers who excelled in various walks of life,
- Victims who moved-on in their life – and started travelling in the path of development, in 2012
- Home makers who excelled in their life though they’re asked to be confined within the walls, to the 4 different sectors of society (schools, colleges, corporates and community gathering centers), to speak upon the practical approaches they momentarily cultivated to overcome the situation to excel in their life.
Success Stories at Chhaya
Success Stories of Courageous Helping Brainz Volunteers
–Surbhi Tyagi, a brave-heart from Meerut. Surbhi, now a Finance professional was travelling from Ghaziabad to Meerut in a 6pm bus which she boarded from KIET, Ghaziabad where she was pursuing her masters of business administration. During her journey, she found a small girl child (aged around 6) being molested by a teen, Surbhi stood up from her seat and slapped the sleepy mother and the teen and courageously took the entire bus to the nearby police station and filed a case against the teen.
–Radhika Gupta, a final year Engineering Student at MIET, Meerut while in 3rd year saw some of the house keeping staff of her college weeping and worrying talking about their daughters who were forced by their neighbours. Radhika reported this case to Helping Brainz, wherein we directed her with the necessary steps, wherein Radhika went and motivated the mothers to file a case against their neighbours, though they were afraid because of being from a scheduled community. The mothers fortunately filed a case against the neighbours and they were penalized.
Our Initiatives
- ChaipeCharcha – Day-1-Informal Discussions : Informal Discussions with the ladies from the rural areas.
- VanitaSaksharta – Women Education, Counselling and Training Programmes : Classroom Teaching Programmes :- educating women from the rural India. Classroom trainings on elementary education on every weekends (1.5 hour each)
- VanitaJyoti – Women Entrepreneurship and Empowerment Programmes :- Cultivating and Empowering women entrepreneurs, thereby providing them opportunities to sell and market their ideas, which also involves, pickle making, handicrafts making, candle making classes (few examples) (2 hours programme once in every month)
- VanitaSuraksha – Women Safety Campaigns
- SahyogSanhita – Legal Aid Camps – Legal education and aid camp for women, once in a month, which also involves Discussion on Government policies with Women (2 hours programme once in every month)
- Experience Sharing Congress – A discussion programme wherein a Women Activist, or an experienced folk talks about her journey towards success (2 hours programme once in every month)
- Monthly Medical Camps – Chikitsa-Shivir – Free medical aid and consultation camp for Women(3 hours programme once in every month)
Meet the Changemakers
If you wish to get associated, please write to us at help@helpingbrainz.org or call +91 9711189900 or WhatsApp
