ElsaMarie D’Silva is the Founder & CEO of Red Dot Foundation (India) and President of Red Dot Foundation Global (USA). Its platform, Safecity, crowdsources personal experiences of sexual violence and abuse in public spaces. ElsaMarie is a 2020 IWF Fellow and a Gratitude Network Fellow, 2019 Reagan Fascell Fellow, and a 2018 Yale World Fellow. She is an alumnus of the Stanford Draper Hills Summer School, the US State Department’s Fortune Mentoring Program, Oxford Chevening Gurukul and the Duke of Edinburgh’s Commonwealth Leadership Program. She is also a fellow with Rotary Peace, Aspen New Voices, Vital Voices and a BMW Foundation Responsible Leader.
She is listed as one of BBC Hindi’s 100 Women and has won several awards including Government of India Niti Aayog’s #WomenTransformingIndia award and The Digital Woman Award in Social Impact by SheThePeople. In 2017, she was awarded the Global Leadership Award by Vital Voices. She is also the recipient of Gold Stevie Award for Female Executive of the Year - Government or Non-Profit -10 or Less Employees in 2016. Her work has been recognised by the United Nations Alliance of Civilisations through the Intercultural Innovation Award, SDG Action Festival and the UN Foundation at the Solutions Summit 2016.
She has penned articles that have appeared in CNN, Huffington Post, WIP amongst others. She has spoken about her work at the Rotary International Assembly 2019, Aspen Ideas Festival, TEDx MidAtlantic, UN Women, State Department, Vital Voices South to South Leadership Summit.
Durga as a citizen sector organisation wants to build power and resilience in youth to act against sexual harassment in public spaces and also work towards a Gender Just society. Towards this, we do various strategic activities around engaging with youth in various places like colleges, schools, events, online forums, and also through active campaigning. Some of our efforts include VOICE (Gender Justice) labs in educational institutions, DAREs (Real Heroes who will be active bystanders) on streets, Unlikely Allies (with men, BMTC drivers, and Paurakarmika women) as well as social audits of public spaces that women should rightfully occupy.
To continue with this and show support to the Global 16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence, Durga launched the India Gender Equity Week leading to the first-ever virtual forum named NGAGE to bring youth and others together to create awareness on the women’s movement, the issues of intersectionality, and also solutions aligned with the constitutional rights bestowed on citizens. The Fireside Chat is a continuation of the NGAGE forum. Through the Fireside Chats, Priya from DURGA speaks to Gender Justice activists across the country on their activism and inspiration to youth to further the movement.
Do you want to know what drives a true Activist? Listen to our Fireside conversations with some of the best Gender Justice Advocates, curated only for you - to question and dissent in your own way!
