The roots of this programme started with CEQUIN’s early work in 2009 on ending violence against women and girls, enhancing mobility and safety in public spaces through public campaigns, engaging the government through legal advocacy and with the initiation of the Gender Resource Centre in 2009, in partnership with the Delhi Government ( ‘Mission Convergence’) in the largely migrant communities of Jamia Nagar in Delhi. In next to no time, it organically transitioned into a full blown community resource hub, with a special focus on women and girls. We were able to increase their awareness and make them well informed of their surroundings. It instilled confidence in them to take the right decision and raise their voices against injustice. Through this programme, we were able to provide a range of much-needed, multi-faceted services to the community such as provision of information on laws, policies, schemes, and value building sessions on responsible citizenship. The widespread impact of this model complemented by the positive response from the community led to its adaptation and successful replication in Mewat , Haryana, thus widening our scope of work and outreach. Over the years CEQUIN has run diverse programmes to collectivise women – from capacity building trainings for Self Help groups, to the Community Paralegal Workers trainings, health camps, livelihood initiatives like Jamia Bazaar and Jamia Craft which collectivised women artisans bringing them into the marketplace as entrepreneurs, Financial Literacy, Functional and Digital Literacy programmes across Delhi & Haryana, and mass awareness public campaigns like Awaaz Uthao led by community groups to build awareness around gender based violence. 

With our experiences above, we recognised that inorder to address rampant gender based violence, build legal awareness, capacities for dignified livelihood and promote access to quality health and nutrition – communities must have autonomous networks of women leaders who can sustain this change in the long run. With this recognition that women can play a multiplier role in redefining gender norms in their families and building gender equitable communities – we started the Mahila Panchayat programme. Inorder to create an enabling environment for girls to grow, we engage women and mothers from the community into ‘collectives’, which are trained on issues like gender, health, education, career, leadership, and law and policies impacting women and girls, who actively support their girls to access public parks, have a nutritional diet, stay in school, have the right to choose when they get married and conceive, moving towards dignified livelihoods. These collectives play a critical role in advocating against gender based violence in the community and in supporting girls to overcome cultural and structural barriers to participate in sports and education, breaking the cycle of generational violence. To engage the community, our members lead in conducting gender audits, holding public meetings like ‘Nari ki Chaupal’ to advocate against GBV, early marriage and other forms of gender based discrimination. 

Many of our collectives have transformed into independent self-sustaining networks, who actively address VAWG in their community everyday, through counseling, legal mechanisms and engagement with the local police. Many of our members are domestic workers, Asha and Anganwadi workers, migrant workers, teachers and are part of various other women’s informal collectives. Over the years over 19 lakh women have been part of our collectives, trainings and campaigns.