Every year, the United Nations observes the period from 25th November, International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, till 10th December, Human Rights Day, as 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Vilolence.
The campaign is a time to galvanize action to end violence against women and girls around the world.
This campaign is run by our participants, mostly from all our different gender programs who come together to brainstorm, design and lead the social action project on each day to influence the youth, their families, peers and communities on Gender and the issues of Gender. The campaigns focuses on various themes like Girl Child Marriage, Gender Roles, Gender Based Violence in Marriage and Gender Based Discrimination and Sterotypes in everyday life and is usually conducted in the form of a social media campaign, hosting a gender mela or writing an article related to the concept of Gender.
Over the last two years, more than 70 young people from 18 Educational Institutions including Roda Mistry
College of Social Work, BJR Govt. Degree College, AV College of Arts, Science and Commerce, and Govt. City
College have led the Samvidhan Journey in Hyderabad.
One such powerful task was the Gender Wild Card task which required the Jagriks to exchange gender roles for
24 hours with a family member. One of our Jagriks, Rahul, inspired his fellow Jagriks by sharing about his
role at home. He shared about his mother who had been bed ridden for 7 years and he, being the eldest child,
performed tasks that are expected of women. Playing the role of his mother, including cooking, cleaning, managing
the household, and caring for his mother who had been doing this for the last 7 years along with pushing him to
get his education. He had taken up this role in spite of the social pressure from family and friends about
performing tasks which are usually meant to be done by women at home. This story gave them an opportunity to
reflect on the role they can play in creating a fairer and non prejudiced world for all genders by not having a
stereotypical gendered attitude towards others.
This campaign journey can be customized and contextualized as a programme with diverse spaces. The programme begins with an Orientation Workshop, and then team pairs conduct their tasks with a gap of 3-5 days over 2 months while meeting briefly to share their experiences. This programme can be integrated during academic hours and in curricula and becomes an interesting module for citizenship and understanding the Constitution.
It is the annual event of Rubaroo which is held as the closing event of 16 days of activism to showcase our gender work to the community and the people of the hyderabad.
To express our solidarity with this world wide campaign, Rubaroo has been running ‘Rubaroo with Gender’ (Face-to-face with Gender), since 2014.
Every year we host the campaign in a public space of Hyderabad, while focusing on various themes like Girl Child Marriage, Gender Roles, Gender Based Violence in Marriage and Gender Based Discrimination and Sterotypes in everyday life. As part of this campaign, we host film screenings, open forum discussions, interactive activities, quiz setups and booths, personal reflection spaces, and social experiments exploring the theme of Gender Based Violence, Early Child Marriages, to facilitate conversations on Equality, Identity, Violence and Human Rights related to Gender.
Over the last three years, through this campaign, more than 500 youth have directly been part of this space. British Deputy High Commission Hyderabad, AJWS, ARROW, Pravah, and MANUU are partners who have collaborated with Rubaroo for this campaign.
Rubaroo with Gender can be setup as a campaign, workshop, or an exposure module to help decode ‘Gender’, for participants to build a greater understanding of the thematic in everyday life. Students can lead Social Action Projects and campaigns to sensitize larger audiences.
Every year, the month of June is celebrated as Pride month to celebrate and acknowledge ‘gender diversity & promote equality’, ‘acceptance & harmony’ among communities.
To express our solidarity with the LGBTQIA+ community, Rubaroo has been running, ‘Pride Month Campaign’ since 2021. The aim of the campaign is to spread awareness about the importance of initiation of a dialogue on different identities of Gender through our social media handles.
Every year, during the first week of February, the International Interfaith Week is hosted. Similarly, during the third week of November, the UK Interfaith Week is hosted.
We have been actively advocating and nurturing interfaith spaces since 2017 through various activities to bring communities together to celebrate diversities and one another religions by having a dialogue around food, culture, dance, art, stand-up comedy and using this as an agency to break the barriers of faith based identities.
Every year the ‘International Youth Day’ and the ‘National Youth Day’ are celebrated on 12th August and 12th January respectively.
Our idea is to bring all our community centres and the young people from the community together during one of the youth days to celebrate young people’s agency to negotiate, ask and demand for themselves. It is also an initiation to acknowledge and celebrate young people’s voice to express their opinions, feelings and emotions, young people’s action lead by them in the community and to just celebrate the wholesome spirit of youth and young people by organizing a sports event or a youth mela or a panel discussion or planning a rally led by young people, or by initiating a dialogue or an action on the issues concerning the young people.