How did it start?
One man’s “brought up by strong women” led to a movement
working towards to create safe space for everyone.
It was Delhi Nirbhaya incident in 2012 and series of gender-based crimes aftermath of that incident across India, Sandhiyan was deeply triggered with the insecurity and negativity it panicked the whole country. It made him reflect with all the stories he heard throughout his growing from mother, sisters and friends, he desired to challenge the attitudes and bias which perpetuates different forms of violence against women and children across all strata of life. To spread positive hope with stories of resilience, courage and bravery where difficult situations handled in smarter ways which could have made them feel safe and empowered - so he started a Facebook page in which he was sharing snippets of all these stories, interviews, public opinions, conducted campaigns where netizens contributed to their small steps of safety to be followed at their home, school/ college, workplace and public place.
From Facebook to WhatsApp
Following a campaign #AssureOurChildrensFuture which was conducted between 11th October, 2014 observing International Girl Child Day to 24th January, 2015 observing National Girl Child Day in India - during these 15 weeks, 15 issues that a girl face throughout her lifetime before even she was born. As these campaigns got huge response and those individuals who followed the page were willing to contribute to the greater cause through volunteering, the movement over WhatsApp was created to work for different focused programs to address issues of Gender Based Violence (GBV). Contributing to the research and discussions, followers joined with Sandhiyan to start off our offline journey with a pilot program at Nochikuppam on 8th March on International Women's Day
Nochikuppam to Chemmenchery
After working for 4 continuous months in trying our best to support the community, we got to learn the community was allocated and slowly moving to Chemmenchery which was then governed by Slum Clearance Housing Board which led us to envision a holistic community development project addressing the core issues that we have chosen to create safe spaces for individuals of different ages. We started our first program as a 5-week campaign on Child Rights & Protection campaign conceptualized with street play, door-door campaign, sticker campaign and signature campaign reaching out to 6700+ households creating visibility on Childline Helpline 1098
Since then, we have been working with different target groups from rural to urban, government schools to international schools, underserved tribal communities to gated communities in delivering our comprehensive programs and initiatives for 10 years now and have been expanding our work and reach every year.
