Jan Sahas- Dignity March

Ashif Shaikh is a human rights activist from India who has been working on prevention of sexual violence on women and children since last two decades. He founded a survivor led organization called Jan Sahas in 2000 which is empowering >18600 survivors to access justice, dignity and rehabilitation across seven states of India covering over  12000 villages. Ashif has also played a key role in stirring a movement against sexual violence in India through multiple groundbreaking efforts~ Alongside 25000 survivors of sexual violence, in 2018, he has led the largest survivor led campaign in India called “Dignity March” covering 200 districts and 24 states in 64 days. Ashif has also facilitated the foundation of ‘Survivors Forum’ a forum of >5000 survivors of sexual violence, trafficking and slavery. The forum has been actively advocating for policy level reforms around prevention of VAW and for the rehabilitation of the survivors.

India has ranked as the world's most dangerous country for women according to the Thomson Reuters survey in 2018. Jan Sahas recognizes the severity of the issue and the absence of acknowledgement of the problem in the South Asian region. Jan Sahas is committed to develop a sustainable system that does not only reduce the prevalence of VAW through legal process but also activate the stakeholders who are accountable for ensuring that justice is accessible to the most vulnerable and marginalized groups. We aim at creating a conducive environment for survivors through cultivation of leadership among the women and girls who will lead the movement against violence globally and demonstrate solutions to tackle the inequalities and stigma. Our project is actively working in seven states of the country and has proven to significantly improve the systemic response to the issue along with ensuring the entitlements to the survivors of violence.

WHO estimates 1 in 3 (35%) women worldwide to have experienced sexual violence in their lifetime. The Asia Foundation’s report, “The State of Conflict and Violence in Asia,” finds that gender-based violence is one of the deadliest forms of violence in the region which has been increasing exponentially. It kills more people than armed conflict and other forms of escalated violence that typically receive more attention from policymakers and development actors. As many as 2.5 million crimes against women have been reported in India over the last decade. Reported cases of VAW increased 83% from 185,312 in 2007 to 338,954 in 2016. The 2016 National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data shows that a woman in India is raped every 13 minutes and six women gang-raped every day (>100 rapes are reported every day by the police). 

A survey findings by Livemint in 2018 reported more than 99% of cases of sexual violence go unreported in the country. Conviction takes place in only 25.1% of the reported cases of rape which means that about 3 out of 4 rape survivors will not not recieve justice, compensation or rehabilitation in order to get back up on their feet post-incident.

Our model is executed through the following strategies and approaches:

• Putting survivors and communities first

  • Survivor-centric lens: we prioritize survivors’ needs and agency across our interventions

  • Survivor and community leadership: we enable survivors and communities to lead their own agenda and transformation

  • Understanding centrality of gender and caste: with 95% of our staff belonging to communities we serve, we understand the nuances relevant for our interventions

• Focusing on long-term, systemic impact

  • Measurable impact: we work towards creating measurable impact

  • Replicability for scale: we create low cost, replicable solutions that can be adapted by state and non-state actors

  • Comprehensive intervention for transformation: we intervene across the spectrum of prevention, response, rehabilitation, and systemic reform, applying a combination of development- and rights-based approaches depending on the demands of the situation.

• Collaborating with all key stakeholders

  • Working closely with state actors: we leverage, support, and develop the capacity of state actors – ranging from law enforcement to policymakers – to enable them to better execute their constitutional duties

  • Networking and alliance building: beyond the state, we seek to partner and build alliances with actors ranging from community-based organizations, nonprofits, cultural groups, and solidarity networks to strengthen the movement against sexual violence.

Jan Sahas, through direct and indirect interventions, is working with over 19,68,000 women and girls across all program areas. We have liberated and rehabilitated 46,547 women from the inhumane practice of manual scavenging which has traditionally engulfed women belonging to the ‘Dalit’ community which is placed at the bottom of the hierarchy of south asian societies. These women are forced to clean human excreta with bare hands and are globally recognized as victims of the worst form of slavery known to human kind.

We have successfully rescued and rehabilitated 7,256 women from forced labour and trafficking for sexual exploitation most of whom belong to the most remote and deprived tribal regions suffering from chronic hunger and poverty. 

Over a million girls (as young as 11 years) from Dalit communities are victims to the traditional practice of caste based sex work. We have prevented 6,200 young girls from such communities who push their daughter into commercial sexual exploitation.

With over 100 rapes being reported in the country every day, we are providing comprehensive support (legal aid, psycho-social counselling, leadership, sociaal security benefits, education and skill development) to >18,600 survivors of sexual violence.

Building awareness and sensitization on a large scale through national level advocacy campaigns remains to be one of the strongest areas where Jan Sahas’ excellence lies. We have reached out to over 10 million people through our public campaigns against sexual violence across the country. The dignity march campaign (2018) alongside 25000 survivors of violence reached out to over 1100 stakeholders and 22 policy makers along with over 10 million citizens. The powerful speeches, street theatre, songs and slogans, public rallies and press conferences by the survivors were covered by 1224 mainstream media reports.

Jan Sahas’ work on sexual violence has evolved, deepened and broadened since it first emerged. At first, all the survivors supported by Jan Sahas were Dalit women. In 2007, a non-Dalit survivor who had been raped by a Dalit man sought help from Jan Sahas. This appeal created a dilemma for Jan Sahas, which had become known as a radical Dalit organisation. The perpetrator and the majority of Jan Sahas’ staff belonged to the same caste. There was stiff internal and external opposition (from other Dalit NGOs) to the idea of a Dalit organisation helping a non-Dalit. The difficult debate that ensued and Jan Sahas’ subsequent decision to support all survivors of sexual violence, regardless of caste, class or religion, was an important turning point for the organisation. The reasoning on which that decision was based now informs the whole of Jan Sahas’ strategy. Our work is constructed within the framework of Constitutional rights and values – that is, human rights rather than Dalit rights – and asserts that such a broad framing is essential. Jan Sahas situates the work on sexual violence within the broader twin objectives of empowering excluded social groups and ending caste-based slavery and (gender-based) violence.

We are passionate about prevention of sexual violence against women and girls due to the urgency of the problem. While 92% of our team belongs to the marginalized communities we work with, we have experienced closely how caste inequalities are often linked to gender based violence and injustices. In an internal survey of the team, we found out that over 70% of the members (Dalits and Non-Dalits) of the team have undergone multiple incidences of sexual violence in their lifetime. It is a reflection of the dark reality women and girls are facing globally and the society fails to acknowledge the urgency of the issue. 

Also, spending almost two decades working closely with survivors of sexual violence and witnessing their courage to seek justice irrespective of their struggles dealing with the often long-lived trauma, stigma, ostracism, and loss of dignity, shelter, livelihoods~  continues to motivate us towards the work that we are doing

In over two decades, Jan Sahas has worked with more than 18600 survivors of sexual violence and the conviction rate in the cases of Jan Sahas supported cases is 72% which is almost three times the national conviction rate of 25.1%. To make a holistic approach possible, Jan Sahas has developed collaborations and partnerships with 40 organisations across India that have complementary strengths and presence working towards the prevention of sexual violence with similar vision and strategies. Since we work keeping survivors at the centre of all our interventions, we work with a range of stakeholders at multiple levels- Individual, Family, Community, Government, Media, Lawyers and Doctors. Jan Sahas provides training and sensitization to police officials in all 68 districts of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, Delhi-NCR, Chattisgarh and Jharkhand. Additionally, Jan Sahas provides socio-legal assistance to 55 One Stop Crisis Centres run by the Government of India. We have an in-house forum of 8000 lawyers across the country who provide pro-bono legal aid support to all 18,600 cases of rape we are working with.

We believe that an issue as complex as sexual violence can not be dealt with a single approach or strategy. Hence, in order to holistically the tackle the issue of sexual violence, we work with a range of strategies and a multi-facet approach focussing on~ Prevention, Response, Rehabilitation and Systemic Transformation to provide a comprehensive solution to the problem of sexual violence- a reality faced by millions of women and girls globally.

Initially, to tackle cases of sexual violence, Jan Sahas exclusively focussed on transformation of the criminal justice system along with direct intervention with the survivors of violence. Although the legal aid support provided to the survivors helped them in conviction of the perpetrators, we came across multiple incidences of survivors withdrawing their cases due to the lack of support or pressure from their families and backlash from the communities. We have worked in cases where women have faced further violence, their houses have burnt down and they have been ostracized by their communities. However, the survivors who have persevered despite the backlash and pressure became the source of motivation for Jan Sahas to seek a solution for a problem. It was when Jan Sahas introduced mandatory family counselling to ensure that the survivor has the support to continue her fight for justice. We conducted rigorous community engagement and identified ‘Barefoot Lawyers’ from the community who constantly engaged community members on issue pertaining to violence against women. These 7000 barefoot lawyers across the 62 districts we are working in are one of the primary source of identification of cases of sexual violence and are responsible for the replication of our interventions.

Under Ashif’s relentless leadership, eight community based organizations have come together: Yuva Vikas Mandal, Gramin Swavlamban Samiti, Udan, Buniyad, Survivors’ Forum, Jan Sahas Empowerment Society, Dignity and Design and Lawyers’ Forum. The nature of this support includes ensuring legal compliance, management structures, program management and fundraising.

Ashif has led multiple national advocacy campaigns- Dignity March (2018), Rashtriya Garima Abhiyan (2005 and 2013), Signature Campaign (2018 and 2019) which has led to several policy level changes and dialogues with key policy makers. Jan Sahas, under Ashif’s leadership was responsible for bringing in policy reforms such as introduction of the new law- The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation 2013 and two suo moto petitions by the Chief Justice of India addressing the pendency of cases in fast track court, illegal practice of two finger tests, and impunity of state actors towards survivors.

Jan Sahas began in the year 2000 with a staff strength of 12 volunteers. Today almost two decades later, it has grown to have over 1500 staff and 4800 volunteers based out of 12000 villages and towns

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Jan Sahas’ innovation lies in movement building with integration of technological solutions. 

Incubation of survivor led organizations:  We have trained and capacitated over 4800 survivors to emerge as barefoot lawyers who are successfully replicating the interventions of the project beyond the project locations. The survivors forum constitutes over 8000 survivors of GBV who ensure stringent monitoring of policies and their implementation at the ground through robust evidence based advocacy efforts with the government and the policy makers. The Lawyers’ Initiative Forum provide pro-bono legal support to the survivors of sexual violence and support them in litigation, whereas they are training barefoot lawyers on the various protective laws, constitutional rights and provision for women and girls. The lawyers also support survivors' forums to file litigation in the Supreme Court to execute larger advocacy initiatives for policy level reforms

Technology: To make justice accessible in the most remote locations in our target areas, we have developed ‘Sankalp App’ in support of the state government to increase the reporting of cases and the reach out to the survivors. The data collected in the App (by barefoot lawyers or survivors themselves) is shared with the police to prevent loss of any significant information, especially in the present situation of pandemic where courts are shut and police are deployed for covid relief. We have also developed the ‘Jan Saathi’ app for linking survivors to social security benefits. The app has linked over >80,000 individuals with government schemes (especially during the pandemic). 

Our theory of change is provided below:

1. Prevention:

Specific Outcomes:

Reduction in prevalence of sexual violence

Outputs:

Community members are more vigilant on cases of sexual violence

Men and boys are sensitized on the issue of sexual violence

Activities:

Mass and community-based campaigns

Engagement with men and boys, families, and relatives

Risk-mapping

2. Response: to develop an effective and prompt response system for the survivors of sexual violence 

Specific Outcome:

250,000 survivors have access to justice

At least 50% rate of conviction in cases of sexual violence

Outputs:

Cases of sexual violence identified and reported

Survivors of sexual violence who recieve legal support and counselling

Survivors receive immediate support and interim compensation

Survivors are provided with medical treatment and forensic tests

Activities:

Filing of complaints 

Medical support

Legal aid

Social support

Emergency support

3. Rehabilitation: to ensure the right of the survivors to attain comprehensive rehabilitation which enables them to get back up on their feet and lead a dignified life. 

Specific Outcome:

At least 50% of the survivors have sound mental health and are rehabilitated with viable employable skills.

Outputs:

Survivors receiving psycho-social counselling

Survivors receiving skill development training and placement support

Survivors enrolled in schools and colleges

Survivors linked wto government social security benefits

Activities:

Psychological counselling and therapy

Skill development Training

Enrollment/Re-enrollment in schools and colleges

Linkages to social security benefits and entitlements

4. System Reform: to improve state response towards sexual violence and its survivors through influencing policies and activating state-actors.

Specific Outcomes:

>140,000 Local state actors activated through capacity building

Favourable national-level policies, as well as improved budgetary allocation and utilization, greater infrastructure to prevent and respond to violence

Outputs:

State actors sensitized, trained and capacitated on sexual violence

Dialogues with policy makers

Increase in percentage of budgetary allocation

Increase in % of utilization

New reforms introduced by the government in policies centring women and girls

Fast track courts established

Improved infrastructure-Type of improvement

Activities:

Policy advocacy campaigns

Capacity building of public officials

Meetings with policy makers

Assessment of Policy level gaps, documentation and Dissemination of findings

Multi-stakeholder coalition for monitoring policy and implementation. 

Jan Sahas, at an organizational level has supported ~1.2 million people from the most disadvantaged and vulnerable communities in India through its efforts by directly deploying 37 projects across 62 districts in 9 states of the country.

The statistics on our beneficiary population through the project at the grassroots have been whereby we have supported 18,600 survivors of rape and sexual violence in gaining access to justice and rehabilitation, and we are looking at an increase of 10,000 beneficiaries in the next one year increase and next to 100,000 beneficiaries in the next five years.

In the next five years, Jan Sahas will work towards reducing the prevalence of sexual violence by 25%, directly in 150 districts India and through partners in 50 districts of Nepal Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The key impact goals for us as per our five-year plan are:

• Preventing 1 million women and children from sexual violence through: Prevention programs at community and institutional level, consciousness and awareness raising, capacity building of the stakeholders, safety mapping and risk mitigation, and coaching men and boys as drivers of change.

• Supporting 250,000 survivors of sexual violence through: Legal interventions, identification and documentation of the case, counselling (family and individual), Emergency Support, Social-economic Support and for receiving Interim Compensation.

• To ensure conviction in at least 50% (125,000) of the cases of sexual violence dealt by Jan Sahas.

• To ensure that at least 50% of the survivors of sexual violence (125,000) receive effective and holistic rehabilitation support in forms of long term psycho-social support, support for education, skill development and for livelihood opportunities.

To activate at least 140,000 state and non actors who are intensively involved in the victim support procedures through sensitization and capacity building. Activation of these state actors will directly lead to an improved status of implementation of policies at the grassroots.

The barriers that currently exist can be listed as under: 

1. Political and Social hindrance: Since Jan Sahas works on sensitive and rights based issues like VAWG and Slavery, the current political environment is not conducive for rights based organizations like ours to survive and thrive. Our work concerns changing age old tradition, biases and attitude due to which we face a lot of backlash. 

2. Financial Backing for VAW: Issues like violence against women face lack of funding allocation both, by the state and in the development sector. As we intend to scale up the intervention to other South Asian countries in the coming years and though we have a viable financial plan to support the current operations, we lack the financial surplus to aid the scale up that we have planned for. 

3. COVID context increase in number of cases: As reported by the National Commision for Women, there has been a steep rise in the crime against women across the country. At this point, we have a growing demand for interventions to expand to the areas beyond our present geography but we lack the financial resources to carry out this expansion

To mitigate the risk of experiencing backlash for the rights based work, Jan Sahas ensured taking the following measures:

1. Dialogue with policy makers: We have initiated solution oriented dialogues with policy makers around gaps in policies and implementation faced by survivors at the ground level. 

2. Strengthening of CBOs and CSOs: Our national coalition of CSOs and CBOs has been making joint efforts towards approaching the government for bringing in positive reforms in the laws surrounding VAWG, mitigating the risk of being targeted for the rights based work all the partners are undertaking jointly.

3. Partnering with Organisations with VAWG as their core focus: Considering the current situation where there is a shift in dialogue with attention on COVID relief, there are organisations who realise its link with VAW and continue to support the cause. Jan Sahas has been reaching out to such organisations to strengthen the response.

4. Collaborative efforts- Jan Sahas has also pooled in funds coming from private organisations for putting forth a collaborative and effective effort to fight VAW. 

5. Capacitating and skilling the fundraising team (in Jan Sahas) to raise funds from donors who are specifically supporting organizational strengthening in order to ensure the sustenance of grassroot organizations in difficult situations.

We are partnering with multiple organizations in order to support the course of our project in diverse fields. MARAA, an organization based in Bangalore, India is supporting Jan Sahas to strengthen our media strategies to amplify the visibility of our interventions as well as to spread awareness on the issue of sexual violence at a large scale through online campaigns. The Lawyers Initiative Forum is supporting Jan Sahas to provide legal support to the survivors on a pro-bono basis and is preparing them for trials in the court to strengthen the justice delivery and increase the chances to get conviction in the cases. Development Solutions based in New Delhi, India is helping Jan Sahas to strengthen our programmatic strategies and refining the impact created by us through in-depth evaluations of our interventions and providing recommendations to meet any gaps. ERPNext is supporting us in building a stringent monitoring and evaluation system in place. We have also tied up with 30 philanthropic organizations to guide us and mentor us through the course of our scale up. We have also collaborated with several governmental bodies such as Legal Aid Authority, One Stop Crisis Centre, Police Force (MP, UP and Rajasthan) to strengthen the statutory mechanism for service delivery.

As mentioned above, Jan Sahas is also currently supporting 40 grassroots organizations that have value alignment, complementary strengths and presence across the country to tackle the issue of sexual VAWG, especially in terms of responding to the COVID 19 aftermath on the marginalized groups. 

For working on a thematic area as crucial as VAWG, Jan Sahas has adopted a comprehensive approach which involves intervention at different stages. The framework is a full circle encompassing processes built around - Prevention, Response and System Transformation.  

1. First level / Immediate Intervention: Jan Sahas has established eight “Resource and Support centres” at the district level and runs 24*7 toll-free helpline to provide counselling to women in distress and legal guidance to survivors of violence. 

2. Support services: Providing them with socio-legal, psychological and medical support to the survivors along with facilitation to victim compensation for gaining access to justice and rehabilitation. 

3. Dignified Livelihood: One of the root causes of VAWG have been traced back to the financial dependency and the related baggage that women come with. Through our model we provide survivors of violence with non-traditional livelihood support including driving, motor repair, nutrition, information technology, along with support for initiating individual and collective tailoring centres. Another digital literacy training customised by Jan Sahas known as ‘Internet Saathis’ helped impart digital literacy training to over 1.2 million women.

4. Leadership: We have trained 8114 women and girls as “Barefoot Lawyers” to nurture their leadership and negotiations skills. As a result, 122 women have been elected in the local governance processes, while 86000 have emerged as CBO members and advocates for policy changes.

5. Training of service providers: We are providing training and sensitization to police officials and newly recruited District Magistrate to ensure active solution oriented state functioning with regards to VAWG.

Jan Sahas has explored its financial sustainability through its vision towards getting sustainable partnerships with the various philanthropic organizations in the country and in the US and UK. This mainly helps us given the diversified funding that we receive through multiple channels like individual giving, crowdfunding, philanthropy through overseas partners, digital fundraising, US & UK counterpart charities, innovative collaborative that helps bridge the gap between the beneficiaries and the funders, and by having skilled professionals on board that expand the scope of our work in the country. It mainly gives us an edge in the field, considering the partnerships go beyond funding, and help replicate and scale-up our operations.

We aim at raising USD 4 million, with an incremental amount to USD 6 million. While, we currently have a partial commitment of the funds. Jan Sahas aims at raising these funds  through grants.

Jan Sahas’ Annual Budget: USD 4 million 

Name of Funders

Funding Amount

Type of Funding 

The Ford Foundation

USD 1.6 million

Grant

Omidyar Network

USD 350,000

Grant

Commonwealth Foundation

(3 years duration)

USD 238,000

Grant

German Embassy (3 years duration)

USD 85,000

Grant

APPI (3 years duration)

USD 1.4 million

Grant

We aim at raising USD 4 million, with an incremental amount to USD 6 million. While, we currently have a partial commitment of the funds. Jan Sahas aims at raising these funds  through grants.

In order to cater to our goals for the project, Jan Sahas is forecasting a USD 4 million support for 2020, of which following would be the components for the expenses:

• 20% for Human Resource Cost,

• 63% for Programmes,

• 6% for Administration,

• 5% for Monitoring and Evaluation,

• 6% for Organisation Development (scaling-up, system strengthening and technology development)

1. Support for Visibility- With its universal reputation, The Elevate Award will help Jan Sahas improve the visibility of our work with excluded communities on an international platform. Since Jan Sahas works on sensitive and rights based issues like VAW and Slavery, the current political environment is not favourable for organizations like ours to survive and thrive. This award would be crucial for us to continue our work with the support of national and international agencies that comes through with the reputation of this award.

2. Scaling our outreach- Jan Sahas works in 68 districts of seven states in India. As we marched along the 24 states during ‘Dignity March’, we realized that it would be impossible for us to reduce the prevalence of violence and slavery effectively, unless we reach out to the most excluded areas. Our plan for the next five years is to scale our interventions to 200 districts of India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, the other south asian countries with similar socio-economic context and systemic challenges against women and girls. This award will enable us to scale our interventions to a national and regional level.

3. Increase in Funding: The universal recognition of Elevate will enable us to increase our funding opportunities from national and international sources that will in turn help us to increase our outreach and impact.

We have created systems for above mentioned areas but in order to expand our interventions to new locations, we will require strengthening of these systems.

Since we are looking at Scaling up there will be an increase in the operational budget which means Jan Sahas will have to look for partners to support the funding aspect. 

Monitoring and Evaluation helps to strengthen the quality of any project, while Jan Sahas aims to look at significant numbers mapping and maintaining quality of programme delivery is something that can be taken care of by bringing in partners who have an expertise in M&E of such large scale projects.  

To increase the visibility of the issue and the interventions, we will require support to strengthen our media exposure.

1. Monitoring and Evaluation: We will require organizations specializing in Monitoring and Evaluation to train the existing M&E team to undertake quality assessment of the proposed geographical locations in four countries.

2. Technology: We will require strengthening our technical infrastructure through possible partnership with Organizations offering technical solutions, especially in the present context of the pandemic where a large part of our work will depend on virtual interactions and activities.

3. Media and Marketing: We will require establishing partnership with Media and Marketing agencies to increase the visibility of the organization.

Potential Partners: 

Global Incubation Network: For program development and M&E

ERPNext: For providing support for Technical Solution

Bridgespan: For providing support for strengthening and evolving our presen