Videos

Serious Sustainability Practices - Praxis Awareness - Level 0.1 was organised under the aegis of the US Embassy and ably coordinated by Swechha, took place between 11am and 1.45 pm on 12.07.2020.

The program was broken into three clear instructional modules with in-built interactions, engagement exercises and tool- based input sharing with the participants.

The first module ‘Preparing for disruptions: Focusing on SDGs - Challenges , Complexities and Inter-relationships’, delivered by US State Department (IVLP) alumna Sanjukta Mukherjee dealt with creating a virtual map for the
participants at the conceptual level, where the terrain included precepts of sustainability, the UN Sustainable Development Goals and their interpretations, general concepts of businesses and ecology alignment to the overall ethos and bottom-lines of sustainability with a distinct synergistic story boarding of the emergent” new normal” apropos sustainable development in the ongoing scenario and the post pandemic world. It included concepts of business continuity, economic and disaster resilience, preparedness and alignment of perceptual positions to make
the participants’ personal businesses vis a vis eco systems empowered by readiness. There were a number of questions including one from a senior correspondent from the Trade Fair Times as to what she considered the most challenging aspect of propagating the sustainable business opportunities which the facilitator answered satisfactorily.

The next session, titled Sustainable Production & Processes - Enterprise Score Card & dealt with a more operational approach where the facilitator Satrajit Sanyal, who is a Lead Assessor for Sustainability Assurance and implementer of the Balanced Scorecard and an alumnus of The American National Standard Institute took the participants through the two different frameworks of sustainability assurance and score-carding and through a very short presentation explained to them the how these two frameworks could be synthesised to create an operational measuring tool for evaluating sustainability in both the social and professional contexts. The session ended with a small exercise which involved the participants and tooled them to measure emergent positive practices in a constrained scenario like the present pandemic. There were queries by a senior development practitioner and former government official, an International legal consultant and regional registrar for India’s apex body in the field of institutional arbitration and a recently returned post-doctoral fellow from California University. Each of these queries were satisfactorily solved by the guidance and facilitation of Mr Sanyal who helped these participants come to their own solutions by using the tools he had been discussing.

The last session, An Overview of The Growing Market And Increased Demand and Green Business Case Studies’, was a technical session which was delivered by Prof.Judhajit Sanyal who is an academic, scholar and researcher in the fields of Applied information Engineering and Advanced Environmental Practices, and dealt with the opportunities and emerging trends- pre, during & post COVID 19- in the field of sustainable and environmentally resilient business practices and areas, mapping it to the urgent need of recognising and predicting constraints, responsibly creating
redressal mechanisms and systems for the same, taking the incumbents step by step through UN, World Bank and other reports and live data vis a vis predictive analytic forecasts regarding the future of green business.

There were queries from several of the incumbents which were effectively addressed by Mr Sanyal and some queries which were beyond the permissible time frame were promised responses to, offline.

The program due to the enthusiastic response of the participants and the many queries that they raised to the facilitators had to be extended to a further 15 minutes than the originally declared duration. It ended on a very
positive note where the incumbents seemed interested to take part in future events which offered learning on similar lines. This seemed like a measure of efficacy of the program and could be considered as a point of departure for the way ahead.

A conversation on LGBTQIA+ Leadership in Times of COVID-19 with Anish Gawande, Founder of The Pink List; Rituparna Borah, Co-Founder of Nazariya QFRG; and Grace Banu, Founder of Trans Rights Now Collective The panel will be moderated by Rafiul Alom Rahman, Founder of The Queer Muslim Project

The panel discussed alternative ways of advocacy and organising in times of crisis. It also highlighted some of the existing relief efforts and support initiatives undertaken by the LGBTQIA+ community to combat COVID-19. This event was part of an online #CovidKindness campaign run by The Queer Muslim Project and Ms.Wafa Hamid - a US Embassy PAS Exchange Programs Alumni and one of the recipients of the US Embassy Alumni Micro Grants Competition, in association with the U.S. Embassy India, alumni of US government exchange programs & Swechha.

The virtual event took place on Tuesday, 28 April at 6 PM IST.

About the speakers:

Anish Gawande is a writer and translator. He is the director of the Dara Shikoh Fellowship and the co-founder of The Pink List. Gawande graduated with a degree in comparative literature and society from Columbia University and is currently a Rhodes Scholar pursuing a degree in intellectual history at Oxford University.

Rituparna Borah, Nazariya, Co-Director and Co-Founder: Rituparna is a queer feminist activist working on issues gender and sexuality for almost 15 years. Her expertise lies in planning and conducting training sessions on sexuality with organisations, collectives, rural communities, gender trainers, lawyers, students and government officials.

Grace Banu is a Dalit Transgender activist and writer from Tamil Nadu. Founder/Director of Trans Rights Now Collective, she's actively involved in relief work for transgender communities in rural and urban Tamil Nadu.

Rafiul Alom Rahman is the Founder of The Queer Muslim Project. He currently represents India on the Beijing+25 Global Youth Task Force set up by UN Women to strengthen gender-responsive action and to achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. Nominated as a “Young Change-maker” by The Hindu Business Line in 2018, Rafiul brings with him a decade of experience in gender and sexuality rights organising.

70 schools, 70,000 students. CineGreen is a schools program initiative in association with American Express and in partnership with PVR NEST, Samhita and Swechha. Join our virtual grand finale celebrations here!

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To keep our students engaged during times of Covid-19 and virtual learning, we at Swechha have been organizing Virtual Sessions and webinars on several environmental themes.

Watch our schools program team members Ashim and Vrinda facilitating this session with Vivekanand School, Delhi on 'Importance of Butterflies in our Ecosystem and how we can create a safe habitat for them in our own surrounding by learning more about the native species of host and nectar plants, food, shelter and other special needs for butterflies in our ecosystem.

In conversation with Susan Thomas , an educator with over 30 years of experience in moulding young minds toward making informed choices with regard to environmental issues, climate change and sustainability.

Listen in to her experience working with students and educators over the years, promoting environmental stewardship in schools and facilitating behavioural changes among youth of today.

In conversation with Pragati Chaswal, founder of SowGood, on her journey toward building a community of young farmers across schools in Delhi, SowGood's vision along with digital learning strategies that they have been implementing in order to continue their engagement with youth during the lockdown.

The Learning Community for Adolescent Girls in Delhi was formed to share resources and learning to create a larger platform to empower girls. The aim of this community is to make essential interventions for girls so that they become proactive in public life and develop leadership skills to directly address the barriers they face.

The Delhi Chapter of the Learning Community was set up in 2017 with five grantee partners of Empower- Swechha, The YP Foundation, Chintan, Feminist Approach to Technology (FAT), Josh (Joint Operation for Social Help)- working together to form this community.

This network aims to enable the member organizations to initiate concerted efforts to increase the leadership and presence of adolescent girls within their communities. Moreover, it focuses on building the skills and capacities of the organizations while also empowering the girls to choose, design and implement impactful interventions.

Adolescent Girls Learning Community Delhi Chapter completed its second year at the close of 2019. This year's chapter saw the involvement of 55 girls from 5 communities and 5 organisations. All these girl leaders worked toward raising their voice on issues relating to their #safety #restriction and #mobility. An action packed chapter filled with community campaigns, awareness sessions, surveys and milestone events with large number of community members in attendance!

Presenting their journey film encompassing their learning curve and personal experiences.

Vimlendu Jha, founder of Swechha in conversation with Shruti Seth, discussing environment during and post Covid-19

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