Human Rights awareness camps for 96 beneficiaries

JUMP2justice, an advocacy project, is a new project of Mumbai Smiles, which began its fieldwork just about a month ago. Starting with awareness campaigns for the citizens of our project areas, the slum communities of Andheri east where we work with them, the first step of this project is aimed at creating awareness about Human Rights and Fundamental Rights that all the citizens of this country have by virtue of being human and an Indian.

The idea is to empower these communities with first hand information on the Rights that we are all entitled to without any exception on any basis, be it caste, creed, religion, colour, gender etc., so that at any given point in time, if faced with any adverse situation and injustice, they know that they need to fight for themselves and that they can approach the concerned authorities to demand justice. The next step will be to approach the beneficiaries to know if they are faced with any situation where they are denied their Rights and get them in touch with the concerned and appropriate authority to start the procedure of attaining justice, by way of the Law and Order, prescribed by the Constitution of India.

The awareness campaigns, as we have previously mentioned in our blog posts, are in full force, in tandem with our other projects as well such as the Preschool Education beneficiaries and the beneficiaries attending health camps by the Community Health Project. Today we have an update of three new awareness sessions held by the J2J team for SHGs (Self Help Groups), LSE (Life Skills Empowerment) and the Livelihood projects’ beneficiaries.

In these three sessions, 26 women from SHGs, 41 LSE students and 29 Livelihood centre women were in attendance, with whom detailed discussion and interaction pursued on the concept and details of Human Rights as also Fundamental Rights of our Constitution. While some of the beneficiaries didn’t know about these rights at all, some had very incorrect information! Having cleared all misconceptions post a healthy discussion with all of them, the sessions were concluded to be a success. However, this, we still say, is just the beginning and a lot more needs to be done to ensure pure justice to one and all!