Change agents – Torchbearers of a gender-just ecosystem
Over the years, Azad has mobilised and invested in providing leadership training to community change agents to facilitate an enabling environment to support women in accessing non-traditional skills and live a life of dignity.

Through its work with feminist leaders, Azad challenges stereotypical heterosexual norms – increasing women’s mobility, promoting men’s engagement in unpaid care work and involvement in the prevention of gender-based violence.

Strengthening and further grounding its work in grassroots activism, Azad supports dialogue and action amongst change agents, facilitates programmes on the ground to change gendered norms, and brings transformation in communities.

Women and men change agents are at the forefront of Azad’s work to create supportive ecosystems for women. They nurture connections at the local level, facilitate open and transparent communication, and strategically engage women, their families, friends and peers in challenging gendered social norms. Additionally, they collaborate with local governments and institutions to assist women in obtaining citizenship documents, accessing welfare schemes, and accessing gender-inclusive infrastructure within communities.

Leadership, commitment, and community – A roadmap to gender-just transformation
Azad’s programmes and interventions question prevalent structural inequalities and recognise the intersectionality of gender discrimination based on, amongst other things, class, caste, religion, ethnicity, sexual and gender identities, and socio-economic status. Combatting structural inequalities can be possible only by addressing the interconnections of experiences and challenges faced by women. It is in this context that Azad implements its programmes within a GJSE framework.

Azad focuses on three key interventions in ensuring the right to access GJSE –

1. Feminist Leadership programme
2. Azad Kishori programme
3. Men for Gender Justice programme

Azad works at the community level to –

• Empower women by training them as feminist leaders to enhance their leadership skills with feminist perspectives, enable them to make their own decisions about their lives, and support other women in their communities by creating gender-just ecosystems.
• Engage and train adolescent girls, also known as Kishoris, to organise peer groups in their communities to encourage them to opt for non-traditional skills education, STEM in higher education, negotiate their age of marriage, and have agency over their life choices.
• Builds capacities of adolescent boys and men leaders to explore alternate notions of masculinity and become nurturers and caregivers, sharing household work and supporting women to challenge violence at home and in public spaces.

By piloting community-based gender-sensitive social infrastructure, women and men feminist leaders engage with the government for inclusive, enabling and safe environments for women in the workplace and at home.

In its work to ensure the right to access GJSE, Azad reinforces assertions of the Beijing Declaration – “Women’s empowerment and their full participation on the basis of equality in all spheres of society, including participation in the decision-making process and access to power, are fundamental for the achievement of equality, development and peace”.

Azad works towards providing employment opportunities for marginalised women through GJSE by –

• Linking women trainees who have completed training in the Women With Wheels programme, through Sakha, to employment in the transport sector (four-wheelers and buses) and in e-commerce (two-wheelers).
• Supporting, for one year, women who gain employment to ensure they are able to sustain their employment.