Shadhika

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: 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: 5 minutes As a woman in India, I often hear how lucky I am to enjoy the utmost liberty and independence – especially when I am challenging my society’s accepted gender norms. This seemingly benign remark hides a powerful system of gender inequality. Women in India and around the world can attest to the patriarchy’s power to   

Reading Time: 3 minutes Remember the days where you once walked across a stage and graduated from college, feeling both accomplished and terrified?  Spending time imagining the possibilities and opportunities that await your arrival, in the midst of long nights writing resumes and cover letters that are unique to each position. Those thoughts, feelings and time building applications are   

Reading Time: 3 minutes Our Experience Creating Rangoli Vaishu shares, “At Baale Mane, we create this Rangoli every day without miss and this is our way to welcome the guest to our home. We use colors, dry flour, and flower petals from the garden to design the Rangoli. We play with colors, and we have fun too. At the   

Reading Time: 3 minutes It has been a long journey of 10 years with Vacha. This resource center, Vacha, has given me so many learning experiences that have enriched myself and my life both personal and social. As a student I have learned many things like English, Photography, the computer and Journalism. My confidence improved while learning these study   

Reading Time: 3 minutes This is my first time walking down a lane, which is a small, three-foot-wide alley in which 5000 people reside. We were walking to the toilets, which was passionately talked about during a meeting with girls who are trying to make change in their basti (slum). Walking towards the toilets I notice piles of trash   

Reading Time: 3 minutes The excitement soared as forty young women filled the conference room at the YMCA of Mumbai, ready to embark on the four-day Shadhika Leaders for Change Summit. The schedule was packed, the facilitators were prepared, and the heat was rising in the city of Mumbai. As the young women nervously sat and waited to begin,   

Reading Time: 4 minutes “Team Panj!!” we all shout, giving each other a high five. We’ve just divided into our groups for Shadhika’s “Mobile & Mighty Challenge”, a treasure hunt to reach nine landmarks in Mumbai over the course of four days. The first team to take a group “selfie” in front of each landmark and upload it to   

Reading Time: 3 minutes “I want to stand on my own two feet and become something in my life.” This motivational phrase was common among the 2019-2020 Shadhika college scholarship applications. As 30 inspiring young women are awarded college scholarships for 2019-2020, communities throughout India are feeling the impact that being educated has on a young woman. These scholars   

Reading Time: 3 minutes “I’m looking for someone, someone like me,” Parvati* chants as she slowly turns around. She stands in the middle of the circle. Her question is part of an “energizer” – short games that are played in India to engage conference participants and keep the energy up in the room. This particular energizer is a form   

Reading Time: 4 minutes “There’s a low hum in the room. At first, I look around, slightly annoyed, thinking someone is having a side conversation during the speaker’s presentation. Then I realize the sound is coming from a facilitator who is simultaneously translating the current lecture from Hindi to Bengali for two of the participants. When you are hosting   

Reading Time: 4 minutes I still struggle with the concept of feeling like an equal in this world. I reflect on my own childhood and the inherent expectations of what a girl should or shouldn’t do. I was a rebel, constantly trying to do everything the boys did, just to prove the point of “anything you can do, I   

Reading Time: 3 minutes Reconference in Kathmandu was an event not be missed this year. #recon2019 was organized by CREA, a feminist human rights organization based in New Delhi, and included 500 participants from 50 countries. #recon2019 aimed to rethink, reimagine, and reshape conversations around feminism, sexuality, disability, abortion, and other related topics. The conference was not only stimulating   

Reading Time: 6 minutes I’m often asked how Shadhika selects our grantee-partners so I wanted to share the steps we take. We go through an extensive due diligence process that generally takes six months to complete. Because Shadhika seeks to develop long-term partnerships with those we support, we believe that taking adequate time upfront is absolutely critical and what