Sara Pilot and Lora Prabhu, co-founders of Cequin have one thing in common—their commitment to women’s issues

“I hope we can make things different. Otherwise Lora and I would just pack up Cequin,” says Sara Pilot, founder, Centre for Equity and Inclusion (Cequin). It is this never-say-die spirit that keeps her and partner and co-founder Lora Prabhu going on with their struggles for Delhi’s marginalised women even in the face of extreme pessimism. Sara radiates the positive energy that infuses all their endeavours. She is convinced that things are changing for women—people are waking up to gender issues, media is becoming sensitised and problems are being discussed in forums. Yet, her optimism is tempered with prudence. “But overnight things will not become okay. Change will take place and that gives us the motivation,” she says. Lora pinpoints their eternal hope for change to a shared passion for their vocation. “We are passionate about whatever we want to do. If we think there is a need for it, then we just struggle to raise funds for it,” she says. It is due this single-minded focus that Cequin, a relatively young NGO (set up in 2009) has gained recognition in the development sector. In fact, the organisation is a culmination of a series of informal discussions between the two former United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) colleagues and friends Sara and Lora. It was a short internship after her BSc at UNIFEM that initiated Sara into a world hitherto unknown to her. “At 22, you are out of university and thinking about yourself. It was at UNIFEM that I began understanding the issues women face in India,” says Sara. The influence was so deep that Sara went on to UK for a Master’s in international relations and returned to take up a job with UNIFEM. It was here that she met Lora Prabhu. For Lora though Cequin was an extension of media career. She was already deep into women-focused issues and had “done a whole series on women’s issues for Doordarshan called Sabla” among other programmes and her stint at UNIFEM was an obvious trajectory.” They both chose to quit UNIFEM around the same time—Sara for family commitments and Lora on consultancy assignments. But the two kept in touch, and with a desire to do something for the less-privileged still strong within them the discussions continued. The seeds of Cequin were set rather informally in 2008 when they were still exploring the possibility of starting a formal organisation. “Working for women’s issues is not a profession, it is a calling, and we just started working together,” says Lora adding, “Frankly starting something of our own sounded great, but I was not at all sure that we could pull it off. But Sara seemed confident.” The first grand opportunity presented itself when the Working Committee of the Congress Party sought some inputs from Sara for its election manifesto. Sara immediately advised a roundtable of women’s organisations to seek their views instead of basing the manifesto on individual inputs. Next, the duo partnered with the Women Power Connect and Centre of Budget and Governance Accountability and on October 13, 2008, brought around 50 women groups to the roundtable. The draft report was later presented to the committee. Enthused by the success, Lora and Sara, formalised their partnership and Cequin was born. They started working in a more “institutionalised manner following that and everything started taking shape,” says Lora. One of the projects that took shape was the Gender Resource Centre— Samajik Suvidha Kendra (GRCSSK) in 2009 in partnership with Jamia Milia Islamia. A Government of Delhi initiative, the GRC-SSK is a unique public private partnership project called the Mission Convergence, aimed at the inclusion of the marginalised sections of women. Though Cequin had a choice of opening a GRC-SSK centre in other areas too it chose Jamia because “it fitted with our overall vision and gave us the opportunity to work with Muslim women in urban slums—the most marginalised people,” says Sara. But mobilising 10,000 Muslim households to send their womenfolk to attend classes—educational and vocational—was no cakewalk. “It is difficult for women to come out not because they lack aspirations, but because their men have to give the go ahead and then what about the brood of children at home,” asks Lora. They had to first convince the community elders and leaders to permit the women to come out of their homes. It worked for Cequin for two reasons: one that they were a government-sanctioned agency and secondly the fact the university had given it space to operate on its premises. “Today we have 70 women wanting to enroll for a class that can only hold a batch of 30,” says Sara. For these women, denied the luxury of privacy, the centre is also a personal space where they can meet. The GRC-SSK works on the premise that women are the nuclei of society. By promoting their access to economic, social and cultural rights they can be made agents of far reaching change. The first step to empowerment was to understand the gaps in the existing social benefit schema of the government and the Jamia residents, one of the most closeted areas of the city. A door-to-door survey of 10,000 households was conducted to understand the specific demographic profile of area and targeted interventions planned. This was a six-pronged strategy breaking away from the conventional dole mode of welfare and beneficiaries. Rather, it focused on holistic development and empowerment to make women self-sustaining, economically- viable community members. Cequin provides the women of the area vocational training, non-formal education, regular health services, legal help and counseling, and also organises them in self-help groups to promote micro credit and micro enterprise activities. The SSK component provides information and linkage with the various government welfare schemes and departments. But Cequin has a much vaster vision for the women of Jamia than the one defined by Mission Convergence, Government of Delhi, for its GRC-SSK. It created a Jamia Bazaar to not only showcase their products but also act as a platform for these women to come out of their cloister and let the world get a whiff of elusive Jamia Nagar. No mean feat, if you look at the society they belong to. “There isn’t much movement in Jamia Nagar,” says Sara, adding “And yes, there is a particular flavour which we feel people of Delhi are missing out on.” They did not hold the Bazaar in Jamia, as they felt the residents must come out to mingle with the rest of Delhi. Says Sara, “We wanted the girls to step out and come to south of Delhi.” Both the bazaars have been a phenomenal success. First year, in 2010, there were 18 stalls, and the next year about 39 stalls. “The kiosks showcased the work of girls and also smaller NGOs working around the Jamia area,” informs Sara. They have refined the vocational training component to make the products being produced by the Jamia women to a fine art. For the second bazaar they sought the help of established designers like Usha Prajapati of NID to impart skills to the women trainees. “Usha sat with the girls, identified their skills and then developed a range of products that we showcased at the second Jamia Bazaar in 2012,” says Lora. Adds Sara, “In 2012 we had developed the Cequin craft identity because our vocational training had evolved and we had done next level workshops with these women on design and quality, so a range of products had emerged from those training.” NGOs from Jamia area, Muslim organisations beyond the Jamia area, and a few other women entrepreneurs participated as well, broadening the perspective of the bazaar slightly. From the visionary of the duo, as Sara says, “Lora has great ideas. I am not creative,” flow in concepts together that they sieve for the doable ones. “Since neither of us is stubborn,” Sara adds, “it is the larger picture of Cequin that dominates.” Funds are never a problem though they start with grand ideas that are “too-bigfor- our boots kind of a situation”. Says Lora, “We are so determined to roll it that we practically do so without much money.” For Sara the future is open ended: “If you had asked us our plans three years ago, we wouldn’t have been able to tell you about our Delhi Daredevil Campaign or Jamia Bazaars. This is not to say that we don’t have a vision. But certain things, they haven’t been planned. You have a bigger idea and then it all depends on the current scenario or funding, which is a big thing. Lora and I can have 20 ideas. But if we are not able to raise funds for 19 of them then there is not much one can do about that.” But there is hope for change. As Sara says, “Women have moved so much from our grandmothers generation. Obviously there is a movement. But yes, there are worse kinds of violations that we are unable to remove from our society. As a society we need to step back and think why it is happening and analyse it to some extent. We know because we are in the field. But these are things which an average citizen has to realise.” Cequin is doing much to raise our consciousness and conscience.