What was the motivation behind starting this initiative? If there is any story/incidence, then kindly explain.
The idea of She Endeavors initiated in 2017 in a series of brainstorming sessions to build a powerful and constructive blog/ forum for women where their voices are heard. As a first step, we started by collecting and publishing stories of inspiring women who, in spite of financial, social and economical barriers achieved their goals and had set an example to many. A lady named Rehmath who attended a skill-training program in one of the NGOs in Hyderabad (Telangana) and later started working in the same NGO - an incident happened in her life. She went on a holiday to attend a family ceremony. Apparently, her co-sister is not at the event and when Rehmath met with her wondering reasons behind, she came to know that her co-sister is being abused / facing domestic violence for dowry and was forced to leave her family and demanded divorce. Rehmath felt very sad thinking about the children who would be going through a rough phase amidst this. Rehmath felt this is not fair. She remembered various Acts and Legal Provisions that she learned from a Volunteer during her livelihoods training. Instead of fighting for her co-sister, she felt that she should empower her co-sister so that she can fight her own battles. In the very conversation, after listening to the who pain story, she consoled and comforted her co-sister and eventually shared about the points she remembered from ‘Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act’ and how the acts of her co-sister’s in-laws and husband falls under the punishable offence.
Knowing about these very obvious facts, Rehmath’s co-sister slowly composed herself, negotiated with her in-laws family with a tone ‘Whatever you have done and doing is a punishable offence. Still, I don’t intend to trouble you if you have any regrets. I don’t want children to suffer too. I am okay to forgive’. After few weeks, Rehmath received phone call from her co-sister saying ‘Now everything is getting better. They are not repeated except now and then they are feeling uncomfortable with me. I think that also will get better. Thank you very much..’
Rehmath shared this incident with us to share how happy she felt helping a peer woman but on the other hand, this incident helped us realize the POWER of an INFORMED WOMAN, drift our mission. If a rural woman who has no college education can solve a life-threatening issue of a peer/ family member, what can stop any women from doing so?, once she is AWARE!
Thus, She Endeavors erstwhile focusing on sharing stories of powerful woman, revised the mission to primarily focus on sharing Powerful Information to empower women. We included Rights, Tips and various Support systems being run by Government, NGOs, Philanthropists. Bridging the information gap through field-activities, targeted online access, connecting dots (experts & needy) is the objective/ motto.
Please state the key issue of concern that your initiative is addressing and how? (Also share the objectives clearly).
The key concern She Endeavors addresses is information gap on Rights, Health, Financial, Leadership (RHFL) - by bridging it through Online & Field/ building grassroots Change Agents/ Local Leaders
Objectives:
- Provide/ Promote awareness on RHFL through expert deliberated content - online & field-training programs.
- Build web-platform where location specific information on RHFL is accessible.
- Produce expert deliberations that help people understand scope of RHFL.
- Publish/ Share stories of Inspiring Women.
Secondary Objectives:
- Awareness on Gender Sensitivity as a long term strategy for Social Balance
- Join campaigns around world on similar mission
- Commission research on women issues and advocacy
Please share the background and profile of the community you are working with? (I.e. which area, locality and group of people are you working with?)
- Students
- Grassroots Women Leaders (in partnership with NGOs, Community Volunteers)
- Web based platform
What is your current level of engagement with youth? (How do young people participate in your programme?)
- Contribute inspiring Stories
- Workshops - Gender Sensitivity, Entrepreneurship, Digital Literacy and Cyber security awareness.
- CEO Connect Program (Platform for budding women entrepreneurs to connect with accomplished leaders for mentoring and incubating their ideas into viable products)
- Access our Website to learn about important provisions and tips
- Follow our Social Media to gain and spread awareness on RHFL
We welcome developer to contribute to the development of the web platform for SheE. The contributing guidelines can be viewed here. The requirement and specification document for the web platform can be viewed here.