We kicked off the year by bringing together Rise Up Leaders in Delhi, India for a three-day convening focused on leadership and advocacy issues that the leaders identified for their continued learning and growth. This refresher workshop is part of Rise Up’s commitment to connecting leaders to a global network – including their peers, funders, and allied organizations – to help build knowledge and skills in areas that the group is most interested in and promote cross-learning among participants.

We caught up with two Rise Up Leaders who attended the convening to learn more about the advocacy projects they are working on, with funding and support from Rise Up.

Rise Up Leader Nishtha Kapoor is a Program Manager at Protsahan India Foundation, an organization that employs innovative approaches and collaboration to eradicate child abuse with a focus on girls. Nishtha shared the following about what she has been able to achieve with Rise Up’s training and support. 

“One of my most significant takeaways from Rise Up was the importance of empowering grassroots voices by involving them in the process at every stage. Applying this learning, I integrated local girl leaders into the process right from the initial stages, collaborating with them to understand their challenges and collectively working on the problem tree. Through this collaborative approach, we identified a pressing issue: the safety and mobility concerns in public transportation in Delhi, contributing to an increase in cases of sexual and gender-based violence. Subsequently, I have taken on the leadership of a girl-led advocacy project, involving 40 local girl leaders. Together, we are actively addressing this issue with decision-making bodies in Delhi.” 

Rise Up Leader Hari Sharma is a Program Specialist at Azad Foundation, where he leads the Men for Gender Justice program. Hari explained the importance of male allyship in advancing gender equity and how Rise Up has supported his advocacy work to pilot a gender equity curriculum, addressing issues such as discrimination, violence, unpaid care work, and toxic masculinity in Delhi schools. 

“Challenging gender inequality and stereotypes would be incomplete if boys and men are excluded from the conversation. The societal structure is complex, patriarchy on one hand gives power and privilege to the men, but within the same structure puts many men at disadvantage who do not fit into dominant notions of masculinity.

I want to work with adolescent boys in school through my Rise Up advocacy project and address these issues early. The gender curriculum in government schools needs to be nuanced where both young boys and girls are learning more about harmful effects of toxic masculinity and the importance of gender equitable norms. Currently, I am implementing the advocacy project to integrate the gender equality curriculum in Delhi government schools and run a pilot in 8 schools. After the success of this pilot, we would be advocating to implement a gender curriculum across Delhi schools.”