Lucknow: Hum Safar and My Safar

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After the last post about some of the difficulties of living in Lucknow, I'm glad to share my experience this summer volunteering for Hum Safar, an NGO based in Lucknow but works throughout the state of Uttar Pradesh. 'Hum Safar' means 'Our Journey', and in 2003 began providing legal advocacy and medical advice to victims of domestic violence free of charge. Another important part of their work consists of public outreach activities to promote education about the ills of domestic violence and gender discrimination. On average in a year they deal with 60 individual female victims and conduct about 40 outreach sessions in the greater community, often in local schools and colleges. Part of this outreach is holding meetings in individual neighborhoods in order to organize 'vigilance teams' and 'citizen support groups' so that efforts to end violence and support victims are extended into the community. I thought this was an interesting method and I'm not familiar with any American organizations that work like this.

I recently joined the Hum Safar girls for an outreach activity to celebrate International Youth Day. We gathered in a park with staff from other NGOs for networking and some team building games. At this time the harassing done to myself and girls on my program was very fresh in my mind so I was so glad to meet and talk with a few men from a local NGO that is a men's organization to combat gender discrimination and violence against women. All of this was a necessary reminder for me that there are steps being taken and people working to make the situation for women and minorities in India better in terms of equal treatment and human rights--its just that their work hardly makes the headlines or is talked about in the wider community.

Another interesting story involves some of us students going to Lucknow University for an "Open Space" event hosted by the University and some NGO. We were told that it would be a session to speak freely with local students on issues of culture and youth issues. Each student was given two questions to write on for about two minutes which would be read aloud and then discussed. The two questions I ended up with were: "are Indians more religious?" and "are you afraid of being oppressed in a theocratic or communist society?" Other questions we were asked: "what do you think of Jews?" and "do you think Indian men harass Western women?" I could go on--there were so many more interestingly posed questions. Regarding that last point, we had a extended discussion where several of the women on my program shared stories of being harassed and / or inappropriately approached. And there must have been journalists there because the next day articles appeared in several local newspapers about the forum and what was said. And one of the headlines: "American Women Complain About Indian Men". No kidding. But the issue of journalism in India is a whole other long and complex discussion.

This will be my last post from Lucknow--I'll be back in the States this weekend. I'm sorry that I wasn't able to post more stories and pictures, but the 'intensive' language program was just that, and I didn't have much time for anything else. Nevertheless I hope the blog brought some enjoyment, and keep posted for the next time I may be in India (or anywhere else noteworthy).

Best, Jaclyn

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Photos

Playing Simon Says in Hindi
it was one way for me to really enforce those vocabulary related to the body

two children of Hum Safar staffers
they call me 'mausie', which means 'auntie', and I'm not sure how I feel about it