Infocus: Women Peacebuilders
Vandita Morarka leads policy initiatives, legal research and United Nations liaison work at Safecity. She is a policy professional who holds an MA Hons. in Public Policy and has worked extensively with politicians, government bodies, organisations and philanthropists towards development projects. Vandita identifies strongly as a feminist and her areas of interest include human rights law, development policy, gender justice and legal reform. She is passionate towards creating a gender just and more equitable world and hopes to find solutions to pressing needs through a mix of law, policy and people willing to fight hard enough to change the status quo. Vandita enjoys travel, adventure sports and can be found immersed in reading at most times. She is currently also pursuing her LL.B from GLC, Mumbai.
Infocus: Women Peacebuilders
While we headed towards International Youth Day, 12th August i.e. today, Safecity wanted to take the opportunity to honour women peacebuilders through our series on Women Peacebuilders. We invited women peacebuilders to speak of their experience of using different tools towards peace building in an attempt to showcase the massive change women leaders are bringing towards developing peace and to build collective learnings for those who want to be engaged in peace building processes.
There is an immense and urgent need for the development of the massive potential that young people have towards building change agents and harbingers of change. To strengthen this process young persons, especially young women, need to be shown the possibility of a better world, they need to be informed of the real lived experiences of others with similar dreams and goals.
Our series on Women Peacebuilders was an attempt to showcase women leaders who are creating peace in varying ways. It was an attempt to highlight individual struggles and find common threads that bind stories of peace.
We have had wonderful, inspiring women share their stories of peace with us. Elsa’s story of leveraging the power of youth itself to bring peace through addressing issues of gender based violence; Kirthi’s story of using education as a tool for peace building; Rukmini’s story of using conflict resolution techniques to build conversations around peace; Amrita’s story of using digital advocacy for creating platforms for people to engage towards peace; Ayushi’s story of engaging with young girls and women towards peace building through resolving inner and external conflicts; Sharda’s story of using these very tools of storytelling to build content for young children to learn and practise varied aspects of peace; Nishma’s story of using law and the lived legacy behind humanitarian practices in her work to build justice and Pragya’s story of building communities of change in addressing mental health in India – all of them are so unique and different but highlight the common shared determination and grit of women who won’t stop building a better world, come what may.
We hope young girls read these stories and are inspired to start their own journeys of peace. We hope these stories of courageous women will show young girls the possibility of their own dreams. Thank you for sharing your stories and for reading the stories shared by others.
Connect with us? Send us your feedback at info@reddotfoundation.org/vanditamorarka@gmail.com.
