How Chennai-based 'AWARE India' is making the city a safer and better place

Stories of gender-based violence narrated by his mother and sister were a regular feature of Sandhiyan Thilagavathy’s childhood days. So the thought of doing something to empower women to protect themselves was always there in his mind. The December 2016 gangrape incident in the national capital acted as the trigger. “I started a Facebook page AWARE — Awareness for Wo+Men to advocate their rights and equality — and started sharing articles, created online campaigns to create awareness on how women can fight back gender-based violence,” he says. In no time, the page was a success, with messages from far and wide flooding his timeline.

Sandhiyan didn’t stop there. Following his social media success, he, along with his friends, adopted a fishermen community in Chemmenchery, a small hamlet 25 kms from Chennai. He and his friends have been working with the community for the past three years on their holistic development. The aim is to create first gender empowered community in Chennai by 2020 through educating and empowering the children, who are the real changemakers. “There are eight trustees and at least 50 volunteers actively working at any given point of time. We have three full-time employees and everyone else is either a student or a young professional,” says the 28- year-old software engineer-turned-founder of AWARE.

“We primarily run four projects in the urban and rural areas of Chennai. A lot of our revenue comes from conducting workshops in urban Chennai, and we use this to fund our projects in Chemmenchery, an officially recognised slum, under the slum development board, and few other peri-urban and rural areas around Chennai,” says Janani Viswanathan, project head of intiative NoMoreNirbhaya. Janani, who is an environment professional based in San Francisco, has been volunteering remotely with her team in India in the project.

The projects currently under way at AWARE include, Save the Smiles — born out of a serious need to address Child Sexual Abuse (CSA). “We have seen a lot of acceptance in the need for awareness, being proactive in addressing CSA, readiness in reporting and preparedness in taking support for healing, over the last two years,” says Sandhiyan. However, it hasn’t been as easy to conduct workshops. Often the participants are wary of attending them, and express no interest in learning or understanding talks around gender-based violence. “While at the end of the workshops, they come forward to join hands with AWARE; getting them to attend the workshop in itself is a tough ask,” says he.

NoMoreNirbhaya is another initiative that aims to address gender-based violence by promoting gender equality among all, and sensitise age-old stereotypes and norms. “This initiative consists of four types of workshops. The first one deals with safer transportation. Here, we conduct gender sensitivity training for Madras Transport Corporation staff, sticker campaign of Helpline Numbers, social experimentation of conductor behaviour and rewarding them accordingly,” says Janani.

Other workshops focus on creating safer communities by conducting women safety audits in the city of Chennai, working with stakeholders to address the missed safety features and training and creating safe spaces like safe school, safe colleges and so on. Empower is the third type of workshop where they train young women in basic self defence. There is also GEMS — Gender Equality Movement in Schools — a curriculum that is incorporated in school education with activities and games that imparts gender equality among students. “We also try to conduct events and panels related to mental health (Survivor Series), toxic masculinity (Men talk Consent) and legal rights sessions,” she adds. Apart from these, the organisation also conducts workshops on “safe active periods” and holistic community development.

“Every single workshop creates a great impact. CSA prevention is the need of the hour for every child and parent. Sessions like men talk consent involve men in the conversation about gender-based violence. The self-defence workshops make young girls and women truly feel more confident than they were before the workshop,” says Sandhiyan, pointing at the importance of these workshops in today’s time and age. “A pregnant woman had once come to attend out workshop. She said that while sexual harassment is an offence, if that happens to a child who doesn’t even know what good or bad is, it is worse than anything else. It showed her concern towards the child she was carrying in her womb,” he adds.

AWARE’s message to the youth and their parents is clear. Create safe spaces around yourself, your family, friends, and colleagues. Keep an eye out for their safety and have open conversations. Educate yourself and attend workshops by organisations like AWARE to understand the issues better.