In this episode, we host Dr. Sujata Khandekar and Mumtaz Shaikh from the Committee of Resource Organizations for Literacy, now known as CORO India. CORO facilitates change through a community-based approach within India's most marginalised and oppressed communities. Dr. Sujata Khandekar is one of the co-founders of CORO. She earned a Masters of Arts in Gender, Education and International Development from the University of London, and she engaged eight co-researchers in a Feminist Cooperative Inquiry Project that was part of her PhD work. She was a fellow in the MacArthur Foundation, India Leadership Development Program.
Mumtaz Shaikh, one of seven Indians named on the British Broadcasting Corporation's 2015 list of the 100 most influential women, first started as community volunteer at CORO in the Integrated Development Program. She has worked on gender-based violence for 20 years and was elected secretary of the Mahila Mandal Federation, a 10,000 women strong organization. She now manages CORO's grassroots movement sector.
The conversation and knowledge produced through the production of this podcast aims to respect the diverse lived realities and languages relevant to its subject content and context. Mumtaz contributed to this episode in Hindi. One of our production managers, Shikha Diwakar, interpreted, translated, and overdubbed Mumtaz’s responses into English for our listeners. Shikha is a PhD candidate at McGill University, Canada. Her research focuses on Dalit women's identities and lived experiences in higher education.
In today’s episode, the conversation opens with an overview of CORO’s journey (3:30) and vision to building community-led programs (9:40). Topics of discussion include Sujata and Mumtaz’s journey in CORO (7:36), Mumtaz’s journey through the Grassroots Leadership Development Program (16:43), Sujata’s PhD research (Feminist Cooperative Inquiry Project) (24:07) and Mumtaz’s experience as a co-researcher in this research (34:31), the State Level Women’s Conference led by Mumtaz and other members (40:54), CORO’s school-based gender sensitization program (54:10), and Sujata and Mumtaz’s understanding of feminisms (1:02:00).
Learn more about our guests and their work at our companion site https://www.parfemtrailblazers.net/ This episode is hosted by Patricia Maguire and produced by Vanessa Gold and Shikha Diwakar. Music is by ZakharValaha from Pixabay.
