Jagori: Awakening Women
Established in the year 1984 in Delhi as an unregistered society, with a vision of “spreading feminist consciousness for the creation of a just society”, Jagori has been working unremittingly on its mission for over 25 years now. At the time of its genesis, Jagori described itself as “Women’s Resource and Training Centre”. For its founders, a group of seven people – Abha, Gouri, Jogi, Kamla, Manjari, Runu and Sheba – Jagori was their response to a need within women’s movement. They decided to form what they envisioned as a ‘creative space’ for women to express their realities, “to articulate their experience of oppression, to know more about it and to find ways of fighting it.”
Over the years, Jagori became a part of various defining campaigns and struggles. Among the issues raised by Jagori in the women’s movement have been those of single women, sexuality, mental health of women, safe travel for women in the railways, and consistent advocacy on violence against women. Jagori has also played a significant role as a member of the National Coordination Committee for conceptualization and coordination of the biannual National Conference of Women’s Movement in India. Jagori has also regularly engaged with the Indian Association of Women’s Studies (IAWS) and housed the Secretariat in 1995.
Over the years, Jagori’s objectives have been reshaped into consciousness raising and awareness building on violence, health, education, development and other issues critical for women’s individual and collective empowerment, production and distribution of creative material on feminist issues, dissemination of information and knowledge on feminist concern to meet the needs of women’s groups, NGO’s and development organizations and advocacy on women’s rights and gender equality.

At Jagori’s Resource Centre, one would find a library with a comprehensive collection of resources on various women’s issues. As a part of regular services, Jagori carries out information search and retrieval for both internal and external users. Specialized services like preparation of reading lists, information packages, topic-based bibliographies, are provided on request. Jagori also provides consultation services to smaller centers or NGOs for setting up libraries or information centers or similar assistance. Jagori also has a distribution and sale outlet for its publications and publications from women’s groups and feminist publishing houses from all over the country.
Among the most recent campaigns started by Jagori is the SafeDelhi campaign started to fight the problem of sexual harassment in Delhi.
To find out more about JAGORI, log onto www.jagori.org




The difference between the organization “People for Change” and me is that I simply thought about it while they worked on it. “People for Change” is an organization that conducts tuition classes for underprivileged children in order to guide them in the right direction and prepare them well for the future. The organization was founded two years back with mere five students in a play school’s building which was lent to them during evening hours. It is now situated in Dayal Bagh, Faridabad where they have an apartment to themselves, the rent of which is paid by one of the many donors. It has children from class third to tenth totalling up to a hundred students at present. They have recruited 2-3 teachers who help the students with their homework, prepare them for lessons in advance and also teach them various crafts like paper bag making, art, origami etc. An addition to the teachers there are a few college students who teach on a voluntary basis. The founders of this organization, Ms. Nellie Dhillon and Ms. Nisha Celly, also come to teach on a regular basis. They believe that it is only when the children get appropriate exposure that they will get encouragement to do better. In order to encourage the children to strive for excellence, the organization rewards the students who perform outstandingly well in their annual examination. 

Pravah, an organisation based in Delhi works with young people to impact issues of social justice through youth citizenship action . Pravah believes that sustainable change emanates from individuals. “Change them or their orientation and the system will change.”
month for a daily workload of 10 hours. Then he came to know about Noida Deaf Society and enrolled for their English course in the year 2007. Eventually he got placed in Leela Kempinski Hotels, Gurgaon much to his joy and satisfaction. “I have learnt to commit to my job from NDS, and the value of having a good job and a regular salary,” says Anil.
Shivam Udayan is an intelligent kid, quick to grasp new things. Now he has started learning horse riding at school. Ajay Udayan has been the head boy of his class since the last two months, he is very interested in sports and extracurricular activites.He also took part in Ramayana sessions in school. These are just two stories out of the 180 kids in Udayan care, 11 of whom are in boy’s NOIDA home There kids are mostly orphan or from abusive, destitute and dysfunctional backgrounds. The children over here live in well furnished, modern homes, with all the facilities that one would see in an upper middle class family. Children in the Noida home go to schools such as Rockwood and Assisi Convent.


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