By Kara Brown, a Centre for Social Research Intern in the Media & Communication Division. Kara is a recent graduate from the University of Glasgow, Scotland.

To be honest, I really didn’t know what to expect before moving to New Delhi to join the Centre for Social Research team. Although I secretly feared that I’d find the extent of poverty and crime against women here discouraging, I was also determined to avoid forming any pre-conceptions. Two months into my internship, I had the privilege of visiting one of CSR’s four Crisis Intervention Centres (CICs) in Delhi, where grassroots-level work to end violence in families and communities takes place.

Accompanied by friends and family visiting from as far as Scotland, England and Germany, a handful of CSR staff headed to Chattarpur, in the southwestern most reaches of New Delhi, for the monthly Parivartan Mahila Swawlamban Samiti (Women’s Change Committee) meeting on Tuesday 30^th August. Women and girls, some as young as 8 years old, from all four of our CICs across the city had gathered in Chattarpur to greet us. A few introductory songs and dance performances later, and Chattarpur head counselor Rekha opened up the floor to a question and answer session between our guests and community members. After one teenaged girl raised her hand to ask my own mother if she’d had an arranged marriage, the entire crowd cheered, squealed in excitement and applauded when my mother shyly answered that she’d had a love marriage.

Next, we ran an art workshop where we asked everyone to paint or draw their hopes and dreams for the future. All of the women who come to our CICs for assistance have been through unthinkable traumas in their past, and many are still suffering in the present. On that Tuesday afternoon, however, in a little shaded corner of Chattarpur, after finishing their jobs and household chores, hidden away from the hustle and bustle of Delhi life and the hardships they face every day, the women and girls were all sitting there smiling, singing and laughing as they dreamed up futures of happy families, brilliant careers, palm trees, beaches and endless good weather.

One young woman in particular caught my attention. During the earlier discussion, she rocked back and forth with her arms wrapped tightly around her knees. She showed signs of someone who had experienced the kind of difficulties I have only read about in books: the type of childhood stories that would no doubt reduce you to tears. However, as guests and community members alike took turns to introduce themselves, she had confidently introduced herself to the group and told us that she has been coming to the Chattarpur CIC for a long time. As everyone separated into smaller groups and jostled for a portion of the art supplies, this girl began to draw one of the most colourful and expressive pictures of all. If I did have any pre-conceptions of a bleak future for the women and girls of India, or the frustrations that come with working to change mindsets in a society steeped in patriarchy, they disappeared at least for a while that afternoon in Chattarpur. These young women, with the help of an invaluable support network around them, are finding the strength to believe in themselves and gradually working towards making Delhi a safer place to live. They give me hope for the future generations of men and women in India and organisations working in the field of human rights and development, like CSR.

As some of the middle-aged women and primary school girls began approaching our guests in order to explain and eventually gift us their artworks, a few of the teenagers grabbed a set of drums and broke into song. Some of the younger girls pulled the CSR office staffers and our guests out of our seats to dance and insisted that we couldn’t leave before they’d painted mehndi (henna) designs on our hands and feet. While the henna on my own hands has since faded, it remains clearly etched in my mind just how supportive the women and counsellors in the CICs are of each other, and how warmly and selflessly they welcomed a group of strangers into their community.

Centre for Social Research’s Gender Training Institute joined forces yesterday with the students of Lady Shri Ram College in Delhi to call for an end to female foeticide. Meeting with students as part of the College’s Diwali Mala (commonly known as the festival of lights) celebration, over 100 students joined in by signing our campaign banner and pledging their support to preventing female foeticide. Students decorated the banner with motivational phrases for women while learning more about sex selection. The signature campaign was part of our Meri Shakti Meri Beti project, helping raise awareness of female foeticide, which has plagued India, resulting in skewed sex ratios across the country.

Due to the introduction of sex determination technologies during the 1970s, the practise of sex-based abortion has become a growing trend. The sex ratio in India continues to become more skewed in favour of boys, particularly in the states of Punjab, Haryana and Delhi. Although the 1994 Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act (PC & PNDT) bans determination of the sex of the foetus, the continued decrease in the number of girls shows that the techniques that determine sex are still being practiced.

We’re planning to host more signature campaigns throughout Delhi colleges in the upcoming year. Get in touch with us at media@csr.org if you’d like to host a similar event at your own college!

View the full photo gallery from this event at Centre for Social Research’s Flickr account.

Yesterday CSR hosted an in-office program to sensitise women from our grassroots communities in Delhi on gender-related issues in the recent news. Participants included members of the CSR office team, counsellors from each Crisis Intervention Centre, their assistant counsellors and girls and women from several different communities spread across the Delhi area. We designed the program to increase participants’ confidence and provide them with a comfortable and safe forum for sharing their experiences.

The program was divided into a morning and afternoon session. Activities included an ice breaking session, a discussion among the women regarding the violence faced at home and communities, a movie screening (Impossible Dream, which attracted lots of cheers from the group!) and finally a collage-making arts project on the topic of Chuppi Todho (breaking the silence).

View the full photo gallery from this event at Centre for Social Research’s Flickr account.