Inside Our Leadership Accelerator in India
This week in Rajasthan, India, 27 inspiring changemakers began their journey through Rise Up Together’s 2025 Leadership Accelerator, launching a bold new chapter in our movement for gender equity and justice in South Asia.
With support from Echidna Giving, Rise Up Together has selected this new cohort of civil society leaders and is training and investing in them to advance community-based strategies to strengthen education, health, and economic opportunity across Rajasthan. This cohort builds on the success of our work in India, where 133 local leaders have already driven improved policies and laws positively impacting the lives of more than 3.3 million people since 2018.
Representing every corner of Rajasthan, these Rise Up Leaders bring a rich diversity of experience – spanning education, health, law, environmental sustainability, creative arts, and social entrepreneurship. Many are leading efforts to end child marriage, expand access to reproductive health and education, empower women economically, and challenge caste- and gender-based discrimination. Together, they share a deep belief: equity begins when every voice is heard and every identity is valued.
On the first day of our in-person workshop, the cohort explored this principle through a powerful session in Rise Up Together’s comprehensive curriculum – a deep dive into intersectionality, a framework for seeing how social, economic, and cultural advantages and barriers overlap and shape lived experiences.
During an activity called the Power Walk, participants took steps forward or backward in response to prompts such as: “Does your family own the land they live on?” or “Do you feel safe in public because of how you express your gender identity?” This immersive exercise brings intersectionality to life, revealing how layered systems of privilege and exclusion impact Rise Up Leaders’ daily experiences.
“Our curriculum is designed not just to teach concepts, but to transform understanding,” says Josie Ramos, Rise Up Together’s Director of Learning. “Activities like the Power Walk help leaders viscerally inhabit how the many layers of our identity shape the opportunities available to us and how power operates in our everyday lives. They can use that awareness to lead more effective, systemic change.”
For more than 16 years, Rise Up Together has equipped local leaders like these with the skills, strategies, and solidarity to transform their communities and countries. What begins in this training room in Rajasthan will ripple outward – shaping schools, policies, and systems that create opportunity and justice for people across India.
Follow along this week as we share more stories live from Rajasthan on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Bluesky.
