Strength TogetHER 5- Session 2

19th September, 2020.

With the same excitement and enthusiasm, we successfully completed the second session of strength togetHER cohort 5. Strength togetHER is facilitated by Lokopakar, which is growing day by day and expanding its platform to a larger group of girls.

Our moderator for this session was Ashmita Sharma ma'am, currently working as a marketing manager of Fightback. She has pursued MBA degree in marketing. She is an organised and creative person with full of enthusiasm working to expand the market of company that works to reduce the risk of sexual violence in women and girls.

Taking her field of specialization in mind, we chose the topic - "Untold stories - A time when I felt unsafe". We had to share our personal stories of times when we felt unsafe. We had seven speakers who shared their personal stories. I personally, was very excited to hear all of them.

The stories we got to hear are:

• Our first speaker said that once while she was returning home alone by an auto riskshaw, the auto driver took the long way instead of taking the short route. She was really scared.

•Our second speaker was scared to follow her passion. She loves dancing but felt that it would be unsafe to create videos. She was not confident and was always worried about what society would think. Later, she was able to overcome her fear.

•Our third speaker was quite young when she was catcalled by few boys at a nearby shop. She went to a shop to fetch her books and at that moment some boys tried to tease her. She thought that it was because of makeup that she was wearing.

• Our forth speaker shared about her incident of being followed by a guy. She tried to escape him by entering into a shop for some time. But later he continued to follow her. At that time, she really felt unsafe.

• Coming to our fifth speaker she didn't use to socialize with people. Soon she started talking to a stranger in a social media and they became good friends. He was not showing good signs of behavior from his side. She blocked him and in return he started blackmailing her.

•Our last speaker shared the incident of her friend whose financial condition was not so good. She used to work in an organization where her books tried to rape her. At that time, she managed to escape but later we tried to commit suicide and was even hospitalized for many days.

After hearing to all the stories, our moderator gave us few tips about how we can protect ourselves:

• Speak up for yourself. Raise your voice in order to gain confidence.

• Ignore in the initial stage but take action if it goes intense.

• Turn on GPS when traveling alone.

• Create your personal boundaries.

• Even small things matters. The more you use social media, the more social media traps you. Don't spend much time on social media.

• Learn from your environment. Spend sometime to explore and learn new things.

• Fight for your respect

• Be self dependent.

• Bigger the team, greater the voice.

We were all filled with positive energy and motivation after listening to our moderator. It was really an interactive session. I really got to learn so many things with such a bunch of inspiring ladies. It is so overwhelming to see everyone coming together, making it a more stronger team and a huge success.We can proudly say that "Yes, we are growing."

It was indeed a great and fun session with 25 participants. The session started from 5 and went up to 6:15 via zoom app. We are really thankful to Ashmita ma'am for creating such a wonderful and fruitful environment. Looking forward for more sessions.

Written by: Manaswi Agrawal (cohort coordinator)

Edited by: Aastha Shrestha (LOKOPAKAR)