The Awaaz Initiative

There is an increasing number of rape cases, sexual abuse and other forms of physical abuse of women in India and in the world as well. Mumbai, as a city, used to be considered safe for women but incidents like the Shakti Mills rape case have dented this sense of safety. In this context, we felt it imperative to do our bit to raise public awareness about this horrifying issue. The Awaaz Initiative was born.



We brainstormed and drafted a skit centering on this grave concern. To add more value to our project, we demonstrated a few fundamental techniques of self-defense to the audience at the end of our skit. This was with the objective of drawing attention towards self-defense as a potential means of empowerment and protection against the abuse of women. It was not about the moment of abuse but the levels of confidence in general.

As our desired target audience was varied, we began at DAIS itself and performed for the staff and students of the school. However, our aim was to reach out to the larger public and so, we visited organizations such as ‘Sneha’ (an NGO which empowers women), to further the outreach of the project. We performed for the young girls and boys of Sneha in English and Hindi. Some of the members of our tutor group already learn mixed martial arts, kickboxing etc. In addition to this, we had acquainted ourselves with the basics of self-defense with the help of the Sports’ Department. It was a great success as both boys and girls came forward to practice these self-defense techniques with us and shared their own experiences during the reflection session. To be able to communicate with them on such a sensitive issue and earn their trust for them to open up a dialogue were the highlights of our project.