Shadhika

Reading Time: 3 minutes We all know the current situation in the world. We are all doing our best to follow precautions and maintain social distancing to prevent Covid-19 from spreading. In India, we are on lockdown for so many days and will continue this until May 3. I live in Mumbai, in a slum area. Here, there are   

Reading Time: 2 minutes Sabah, a member of Shadhika’s staff, is working from home for the first time during a national lockdown. She lives in Mumbai with her family. The current situation is becoming worse day by day. Everyone here is taking precautions and maintaining social distance. Before I would go to a co-working office, but due to coronavirus   

Reading Time: 2 minutes For many, “going virtual” during the pandemic has been quite easy. In the U.S. we are accustomed to the idea of working remotely, and many businesses and even more universities and schools have adapted to this crisis relatively easily through virtual work and learning. However, in low-income communities where internet can be inconsistent and telecommunications   

Reading Time: 4 minutes What does it really mean to “social-distance” in India, a country with more than 1 billion residents? This week, we asked the young women of Shadhika and our partner sites about their experiences social distancing under lockdown. From the Field A typically crowded and energetic place, the community of Bowbazar in Bengal, where our partner   

Reading Time: 3 minutes Around the world, Covid-19 is everyone’s current situation.  We all are suffering from this virus, but our doctors, public officials, and other front line workers are fighting with coronavirus for us. Shadhika is proud to have an alumnae named Durga, who is a chemist and is working very hard in this dangerous atmosphere. As a   

Reading Time: 3 minutes This week, the young women we support and our partners shared more about the current climate in India being under a lockdown. A common theme that came through from their reports was a lack of access to proper, preventative hygiene. Wash your hands with our Making HERstory Interns Shadhika’s four Making HERstory interns, Afreen, Pranjuckta,   

Reading Time: 4 minutes Dear Friends and Supporters of Shadhika – The COVID-19 outbreak has shown all of us how interconnected we are and how small our big world has become. We are seeing how each of our individual actions impact each other– even if we are half a world away. Whether we are in India or the U.S.,   

Reading Time: 5 minutes This week, Shadhika and Kiran Anjali Project (KAP) had the pleasure of inviting Navya, a Shadhika Scholar with our partner site Baale Mane in Bangalore, India, to the United States. While Navya’s original itinerary included speaking at Shadhika and KAP fundraisers this week, plans changed due to concerns of health and safety, so we flew   

Reading Time: 6 minutes It is 4:00am as Sabah and I quietly leave our hotel and arrive at the train station in Kolkata.  This is my first experience in a train station and taking a train in India. Arriving there, we find families sleeping among the hustle and bustle of people going about their travel day.  We board the   

Reading Time: 3 minutes Their voices remind me of bravery, their eyes explain pain, and their hearts are looking for freedom. Most of the women in the villages outside the city of Varanasi can be seen working in the green fields. There are always more women than men. Their sarees and the green paddy fields are the real meaning   

Reading Time: 5 minutes You see them everywhere. Broken and discarded and thrown into the gutters. Used once, they no longer have value. These are India’s small, handmade clay tea cups, known as bhar, kulhar, or shikora. You find these cups at any street tea stall. Costing only a few rupees, the tea is sweet and milky. Just as   

Reading Time: 3 minutes Dear Friends of Shadhika, Today we are sharing, with very mixed emotions, the news of an important leadership transition at Shadhika. Kim Burnett, Shadhika’s President and CEO, will be stepping down in June, 2020. While we know that Kim is ready for her next big adventure, and we are truly excited to see what she   

Reading Time: 3 minutes The beginning of a new year or a new decade have always been times of deep reflection for me. This year has been no different. As I take stock of Shadhika’s accomplishments over the past decade and consider the organization’s future, I have made the hard decision that it is time for me to step   

Reading Time: 4 minutes They have a secret. They cannot tell you where you live, for fear you will shun them. They cannot tell you about their family, for fear you will judge them. They cannot tell you about their lives, for fear you will betray them. They have a secret. A secret so profound, it has created a   

Reading Time: 2 minutes Many of us have been following the unrest surrounding the passage of India’s Citizenship Amendment Act. We wanted to share the following thoughts on this moment from the perspective of one of the young women we support. We all are one and that’s how we Indians live. Our country is known for being the biggest