- Annual Reports
Annual Report 2022-23
In 2022-23, Azad’s roadmap has been thoughtfully directed towards rebuilding fairer communities for a gender-just recovery by addressing the challenges that left many of our communities under severe economic and psychosocial stress due to the pandemic.
From the Desk of National Leadership Team
2022-23 was the year when the world returned to a new normal post COVID-19, yet its far-reaching impact can still be felt in various aspects of our lives. Although the pandemic has created deep scars on our emotions, health, economy, well-being, and peace, we have learned to survive and rebuild our lives and communities. The process of rebuilding has not been an easy one. It required immense resilience and hard work as the world’s economy decayed and social infrastructures became dysfunctional. The SDG Report 2022 notes that the current global economic recovery is fragile and patchy. It reports an increase in the proportion of the world’s youth not engaged in either education, employment, or training from 21.8% (2015) to 23.3% (2020) as a result of the pandemic. The Generation Equality Forum in Paris has seen a commitment of $40 billion towards economic justice and gender-just recovery. The decade of action of SDGs also emphasizes sustainable and resilient recovery. According to the World Bank, the female labor force participation in India for women aged 15+ years has declined from 30% (2006) to 24% in 2022 compared to 74% for men. 91% of women in paid jobs work in the unorganized sector with limited access to social security and dignity. Crime against women rose by 15.3% between 2020 and 2021, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. The COVID pandemic also heightened the occurrence of early marriage of girls in India with an increase of 17% in 2022 compared to 2019, according to Childline India.
A direct impact of macro economy has been experienced in Azad’s work domain as well. Women from marginalized communities needed immediate income and non-traditional livelihoods (NTL) became an accessible opportunity to them. They joined Azad’s transformative capacity building programme, Women with Wheels (WWW), and a sharp increase in numbers of enrolment and employable with driving license along with a 30% rise in employment of women as chauffeurs and riders, compared to 2021-22 has been observed.
In 2022-23, Azad’s roadmap has been thoughtfully directed towards rebuilding fairer communities by addressing the challenges that left many of our communities under severe economic and psychosocial stress due to the pandemic. In the year, Azad made great strides in popularizing NTL and creating more gender sensitive communities. For Azad, rebuilding encompassed a manifold process and Azad continued to 1) reach out to new areas, to vulnerable women and their families, encourage women to join NTL and young feminist women and men leaders to create a gender-just ecosystem, 2) enable women with skills of driving two and four wheelers, engage with new markets of gig-economy and make efforts to make it gender inclusive, introduce women in E-transport in order to ensure sustainability of our planet, 3) influence policies towards inclusion of more women in NTL and gender-inclusive infrastructures in public places, and 4) nurture collective and love-based leadership inside the organization.
Addressing structural hierarchies in society through extensive community engagement programmes has always been the focus of Azad’s work and in 2022-23, it has added value to the planned interventions for ‘Leaving No One Behind’. Strategies are planned to reach women in the farthest margins of the society and it has resulted in the inclusion of 20% women from minority community, 59% from marginalized caste category, 49% single women, 82% women below poverty line, in WWW training. Further, 20% are from minority community, 62% from marginalized social caste in the programmes aimed towards building feminist leadership among young women, men, girls and boys.
Through 2022-23, community change agents engaged with the Feminist Leadership, Men for Gender Justice and Azad Kishori Programmes continued to create gender-just communities. Collectivisation has been a pillar of strength to these community change agents in the work of rebuilding after Covid 19. The present and alumni leaders have together challenged gender-based violence, campaigned for equal sharing of unpaid care work by men in households, ensured women’s access to citizenship rights and social security schemes and agency to exercise their choices and join nontraditional skill training and subsequent livelihoods. Burden of unpaid care has been identified as one of the major constraints for women’s entry into NTL. Under the purview of the Men for Gender Justice Programme, a national level campaign ‘Ghar ka Kaam Sabka Kaam’ was launched in partnership with 15 organizations to encourage men to share equal responsibility of household chores. The campaign had a wide impact on social media platforms and on ground, across 13 cities.
Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India has launched a new scheme called ‘Betiyan Bane Kushal’ where women’s skill building in non-traditional vocations has been included as a potential option of skill building for young girls. Also, various state governments, skill institutions and civil society organizations have identified non-traditional skill building for women as a viable opportunity to expand women’s choices of professions and increase women’s participation in labour force. Humbly, we would like to mention that Azad’s work for last 15 years has contributed to popularize non-traditional livelihoods for women within concerned stakeholders.
This year, Azad joined hands with two civil society organisations, namely National Foundation of India (NFI) and iPartner India, to celebrate the achievements of 2 gender equality champions – Natisara Rai & Vidya Rajput from among 64 gender equality champions for fighting against patriarchal norms and structures and leading the society towards gender equality. The first felicitation ceremony was held on 26 November 2022.
As a feminist organization, Azad has always ensured learning and nurturing culture within the organization. Azad continued strengthening collective leadership and the structure of leadership has been revisited and restructured. Collective Leadership has been practiced across levels within the organization and transition of leadership from being founder-centric to a team of leaders has been instituted. While National Leadership Team, a group of three senior staff members, provided the strategic leadership to the organization, the Core Team, a group of five staff members, managed the forte of operational leadership. Azad instituted the Next-Generation Leadership Development Programme with members from across different programmes and locations to strengthen the operational leadership in Azad.
Azad’s Board continued to be pragmatic and supportive to new leadership. People from communities have actively contributed and advanced the interventions as per Azad’s strategic plans, the solidarity from Civil Society Organizations, NTL network members, partners and cotravelers continue to contribute and provide much-needed strength to the work of the organization. We express our gratitude to our donors who continued to support the work to carry out our mission. Last but not the least, a dynamic team with the right balance of experience and new ideas played a crucial role in fostering Azad’s work. We deeply appreciate each one of you who contributed to this journey last year and thank you for all your support, solidarity and inspiration!
With gratitude and love,
Anita, Shrinivas and Dolon
