Kadam Badhao campaign to address women atrocities

JAIPUR: As part of a new initiative to address the issue of growing violence against girls and women in rapidly urbanizing areas of the country, and bringing the intervention plans to the desert state of Rajasthan, a collective programme was organized here recently to focus on the Kadam Badhao Campaign. The ground-breaking innovative campaign is going to be launched shortly in Jaipur.
Over a period of 15 months, the Kadam Badhao Campaign intends to reach out to and influence the attitudes of all individuals directly linked to ensuring that girls and young women develop full personhood and equal participation in all walks of life, including sustainable economic development.
The primary social actors in this campaign will be the Municipal Councillors and elected representatives, as they are in positions of authority and power where they can prioritize the issue of violence against women on the development agenda. The youths will play a key role in leading this campaign and will be drawn from high schools, colleges, universities as well as from the community.
The Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), a leading public advocacy and action group of the civil society, will undertake the Kadam Badhao Campaign in Jaipur while ensuring that the Municipal Councillors play a catalytic role in bringing about attitudinal changes in the mindset of families and individuals. Sustained efforts will also be made for holding the institutions accountable to their roles in preventing and addressing gender-based violence.
The collective programme under the Kadam Badhao Campaign organized in ward numbers 80 and 81 of Jaipur city, comprising Shastri Nagar locality, this week was aimed at taking an initiative for behavioural changes and awareness generation among the identified groups of youths.
PRIA Programme Officer Ruchika Tara Mathur, said here today that the safe and unsafe areas in the wards were identified at the collective programme and the reasons for such identification were discussed with the participants. A ward-level group of young boys and girls of the age group of 15 to 25 years made the identification through the “safety audit tools” developed under the campaign.
Significantly, the government, local institutions and police are important components of the collective programme. A decision was taken on the occasion to appoint a 15-member Local Level Complaint Committee for maintaining the constant vigil in an attempt to bring about improvements on the front of violence against girls and women.
Mathur pointed out that the committee would render assistance to the Community Liaison Group (CLG) of police stations in its work for improvement in the situation. The joint action of the community, institutions and police will be an important aspect of work under the Kadam Badhao Campaign.
The Kadam Badhao Campaign has its origin in a conference held by PRIA and The Asia Foundation on February 25, 2013, in which a consensus had emerged that the youths – both boys and girls – needed to be supported to lead and take responsibility for bringing about change in society as part of a strategy to address the issue of violence against girls and women.