Akshara Centre is a non-profit organisation that believes in changing society by empowering women and girls. Over the past two decades, it has engaged on economic and social empowerment with underprivileged young women in Mumbai, Maharashtra.
Approximately 5000 young women have been able to access educational scholarships and employment along with interactive and intense life skills and legal rights information through Akshara’s interventions. Social empowerment is complemented with economic empowerment and non-traditional livelihoods so that young women can break out of the cycle of poverty. Akshara also works with young underprivileged men in low-resource colleges of Mumbai by training ‘Gender Champions’ to support this empowerment. Approximately 25,000 youth have been trained and carry out campaigns and safety audits for the prevention of sexual harassment to reach large numbers of local people.
Besides ground-level community-based work, Akshara takes empowerment to the level of the neighbourhood and the city. It has done extensive work to make Mumbai gender inclusive and safe for women. In collaboration with the police, it helped in setting up the emergency helpline 103 for women, children and the elderly for the prevention of violence. To make commuting free of sexual harassment, Akshara tied up with the bus and train authorities in Mumbai, to train conductors and railway protection force and women squads. Akshara also teamed with the Municipal Corporation of Mumbai to establish a Gender Resource Centre. Its latest intervention has been in the Mumbai Development Plan 2014-34—to include reservation for various amenities through a chapter on ‘Gender’ and in setting up an Advisory Committee.
Akshara is Mumbai based, with networks across India and the world. It has been on the Civil Society Advisory Group of UN Women since 2013 and is an active organiser for the World Social Forum and One Billion Rising campaigns in India.