Their cafe shut amid Covid-induced lockdown, Sheroes' survivors reskill

Anshu Rajput was 15 when a man disfigured her face with a splash of acid, leaving her blind in the left eye and with little vision in the right.

The 55-year-old man, who attacked her after she rejected his proposal, used to stalk her on way to school at her village in Bijnor, Uttar Pradesh. But the Class X student didn’t tell her family fearing they might discontinue her studies. The fateful incident forced her to drop out, and the hurtful comments of villagers brought suicidal thoughts to her mind.

Six years on, she now reaches out to acid attack survivors with financial, medical and legal help, besides rehabilitating them. Until recently, she used to make around Rs 50,000 a month from TikTok video awareness campaigns before the Chinese app was banned. On Instagram, she has around 25,000 followers and her videos are shared by millions.

In 2015, she read in newspapers about the Sheroes Hangout Café in Agra. She requested her parents to take her there. They obliged, and a year later she joined the one-of-a-kind café run by acid attack survivors. It was a milestone in her journey, but as India went into lockdown in March, the Sheroes cafés in Agra and Lucknow had to down shutters.

Chhanv Foundation, which is behind the initiative, reckons that the food business isn't viable till 2022. It tried to open the Lucknow café but in vain, as all the staffers are acid attack survivors with compromised immunity. While it is trying to keep up online delivery, the café was reopened and closed at least thrice in the last two months amid rising cases of Covid-19.

Alok Dixit, founder, Chhanv Foundation, says that in pre-pandemic times, Sheroes used to contribute about Rs 1.5 crore to their annual turnover of nearly Rs 2 crore. Besides salaries and treatment of the 30-odd staffers, the non-profit organisation spends the money on rehabilitating around 150 survivors.

The foundation had plans to expand the Sheroes venture to Delhi and Odisha, but now Dixit fears the worst — permanent closure.

“The cafés are not just about food. They’re also about the ambience. The Lucknow outlet was also an outreach centre for survivors, with weekend events on awareness against acid attacks,” he says.

The Agra café, near the Taj Mahal,  attracted tourists. With the tourism industry among the worst hit by the pandemic, the café is staring at uncertainty. The government has decided to reopen the Taj Mahal from September 21. "As the café is mostly visited by international tourists, we will take a call (on reopening it) once tourism restarts,” says a spokesperson.

“I got a new life after joining Sheroes, but now it feels I’m going back to the same old world,” says Anshu, now an outreach associate at the Lucknow café. She, however, is taking on the fresh challenges by getting trained as a public relations manager for the foundation's new e-commerce gifting platform, A Gift Story.

Her Sheroes colleagues, besides 20 other acid attack survivors, are also getting online training in arts and crafts and business management skills. The Agra café has been turned into a workshop. Over 100 volunteers from India and abroad are helping with the training.

“I have been making paper jewellery for seven years. I look forward to starting a new career with A Gift Story. I don’t want to feel that we have lost anything, rather we are trying to create employment opportunities,” says Kavita Verma, manager at Sheroes Hangout Café, Lucknow. Initially, the foundation secured a year’s salary for the Sheroes staff through fundraising and CSR aid. It plans to continue giving Rs 5,000 a month to 20 additional survivors for a year, employ most of them with A Gift Story and add another 50 survivors by 2021.

In May, it also started a helpline for survivors who need financial and psychological help. Because Covid may have halted economic activities, but not acid attacks.