Sakshi in association with Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) offers crisis intervention and legal aid at community level and help to tackle local level legal disputes and assist in reduction and reconciliation of violence against women. In our Mahila Panchayat Program, potential community leaders are identified, trained, and motivated to volunteer as Mahila Panchayat Members forming a 30 members team. They were trained on dispute addressing mechanisms, legal counselling relevant to crimes against women, given exposure about the existing legal position regarding property, maintenance, marriage, custody, etc. They are also given training in counselling, FIR writing and legal process while pursuing it further with police stations and lawyers.
Sakshi NGO works as one of the active Centre for legal aid and counselling for women. To make it successful, our programme is undertaken in four areas of South Delhi and South East Delhi, covering two police stations: Fatehpur Beri and Kotla Mubarakpur. Training has proved to enable Mahila Panchayat in Delhi to address cases of women’s distress and create awareness of their rights. To take care of issues promptly, we also support the 181 Mahila Helpline program run by Delhi Commission for Women.
Work Undertaken
This year Sakshi has covered 909 cases related to different crimes against women, like domestic violence, Dowry, Triple Talaq, Cases with Senior Citizens and more. Other than addressing the registered cases, the team also performed do to do visits in the communities and reached to more than 10500 individuals to raise awareness on such issues. The Mahila Panchayat team also facilitated the community in registering and accessing different government entitlements and documents like – birth certificates, Aadhaar card, ration cards, Pan cards etc. As a part of their role, they conducted a health camp where vaccination drives, yoga classes and trainings on personal hygiene were provided to the community people, especially women and girls.
