Page 290 - PDI Vol 2

 Celebration of birth of a girl child and honouring families  Identify the issues in the community and
who adopted family planning after having two daughters. intervene;
 Provide support services to distressed women,
children and the needy;
Special Initiatives
 Create a safe neighbourhood, locality and ensure
A regular mechanism to share special initiatives by GPs can
freedom of movement and protect women and
be put in place by MoPR and MoRD under RGSA and
children from violence and atrocities;
NRLM respectively, as well as under NHM and MoWCD
covering the Poshan Abhiyan and the Mission Vatsalya,  Ensure child and women-friendly wards and
Mission Samarthya, Mission Sambal and Mission Shakti, all community;
of which are connected to the Engendered development in
 Encourage convergence activities to address
Panchayats. Some special initiatives are mentioned below -
gender inequalities with local self-government
 Develop In Arunachal Pradesh, a special initiative was (LSG) and different institutions.
advocacy with the village elders, the community, the
 In Meghalaya, the women addressed specifically two issues
local and traditional governing bodies by the PLF who
- women’s leadership in council and institutions and wage
also started a fund-raising drive through their collective
disparities in unorganised sectors. Therefore, the village
action for construction of a building for holding their
organisations have been actively addressing the issues of
meetings.
non-representation of women in village council and non-
 In Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Gujarat States there are Gender recognition of women in leadership capacities at religious
Point Persons and Social Action Committees – Meena/ institutions and other institutions. Awareness was created
Sakhi Manch members who felt that this was not just one to recognise their leadership capabilities and consider them
woman’s issue but many women in the village were as equal representatives at village councils and other
facing similar problems but were hesitant to speak. religious places. The awareness also focused on
Hence, they decided to take it up to the Village discrimination in wages and demanded wage parity in all
Organisation to get support for planning the action. They unorganised sectors such as - construction, forest work,
also felt that the whole incident needs to be recorded in domestic work agriculture/farm labour, etc. in the region
the minutes book. and in their community.

 Kerala saw creation of the vigilant group consisting of  In Odisha, the Community Resource Person - community
five to ten members who are from the same ward and mobilisation linked with the public institutions through
they are volunteers includes men and women. A vigilant AWW, CDPO and CHILDLINE. CHILDLINE is the help
group functions as a primary preventive mechanism and line number developed by the Government to address child
they refer the cases to community counsellors, Gender related issues; Family counselling to stop the marriage with
Resource Center (GRC) and Snehitha Gender help desk the objective to make the family aware of the demerits of
if further interventions are needed. It aims to: early marriage and subsequently follow up.
 Establish an action force for prevention of Connect to GPDP

different atrocities and Gender based violence in
 The indicators related to addressing the discriminatory
ward level;
norms and practices that contribute to the low value of

265
Theme 9: Women Friendly Panchayat