Saundarya Rajesh, Founder-President AVTAR Career Creators, joined our Board of Trustees today. AVTAR, specifically their flexi-work network for women, AVTAR I-WIN, has been a Prajnya 16 Days Campaign partner since 2009. Saundarya joining our Board adds a new dimension to our relationship.
New Trustee
During their February 2012 meeting, Prajnya’s Trustees resolved to invite Anjale Stephanos to join the Board. Anjale is a young management professional, who has worked in a variety of capacities with the travel industry, educational management and how works in the information technology sector.
New Advisor
After almost five years of picking her brain for all sorts of programmes and projects, we finally decided to make it official and invite Ammu Joseph to be on our Panel of Advisors. Ammu needs no introduction really–one of India’s leading journalists, she has also been in the forefront of the Indian women’s movement.
This is the time of year when people email me and say that they/their students would like to intern or volunteer with Prajnya. In principle, we welcome everybody. In practice, we’ve learnt there are some caveats and some concerns.
For an internship or volunteer experience to work, both sides need to benefit and both sides need to feel good about the contribution of the intern/volunteer.
So we have learned what the caveats are that we need to issue, beyond the mandatory, there is no money for this work.
1. We are not a service organization. So if someone is seeking a feel-good task like visiting the elderly, bathing strays in a shelter or distributing food packets, then we may be able to suggest another organization that can use your help. But we just don’t do that work.
2. We don’t have an office. So it’s not possible to come and help in the office every Thursday morning.
3. We actually don’t have assignable tasks. We are so small we only have responsibilities we are happy to share with or delegate with volunteers. In fact, ALL Prajnya core team members are volunteers. We give our time, while earning a living. So the work happens all the time, and yet not all the time.
For most people seeking to give time to an organization, this doesn’t work. And we understand that. Life is so demanding these days, we really appreciate the time people give us or your intention to volunteer somewhere.
What does work for us is when people slowly start coming to our programmes like the monthly roundtables or to engage with us on social media, and then start getting more and more involved over a period of time. Every single person who is now a pillar has started gingerly and then taken ownership of the Prajnya vision. And we welcome that.
What sort of person can best do that?
1. Someone with flexible time and mobility.
2. Someone who communicates promptly.
3. Someone for whom our cause strikes a chord.
4. Someone willing to start over and learn something new.
I always think Prajnya is a good fit for people in their forties, seeking to re-enter the workplace, but not necessarily in need of paid work. You have education, skills, mobility and life-experience. You may enjoy working with us.
What skills do we need? All skills. We often tell people who visit: Prajnya is like an Indian wedding. People come and go. Pick up the work in front of you so it gets done–folding clothes, putting away newspapers, whatever. Give yourself and us the time to discover what is your niche, the responsibility you can undertake most comfortably. And be prepared to be called out for everything–particularly at programmes, it’s all hands on deck.
If you are around, there are things we can imagine doing because you’re there to help do them. If no one is around, we hesitate to create work. At that moment, when a volunteer organization approaches us, we have only the haziest ideas. So show up, get involved and we will know what we can hand over to you.
We do need more people right now. We need people to come in now and grow familiar with our work. Our work has grown in the last two years but our team has not. Moreover, because it’s a team of young people, we have to endure through waves of coming and going–new jobs, new studies, new marriage, new baby.
Still want to help but don’t have a long time. Don’t hesitate to email us: prajnyatrust@gmail.com. Tell us about yourself. Think in terms of skills you bring on board (can you improve our design skills?). Think of your hobbies (do you like to read? can you do reviews for us?).
This work belongs to all of us. Feel free to check in with us to see what’s there to be done.
And so, our fundraising drive closed with us far short of our target, Rs. 800,000/-. We had around 160,000/- in the account, and another Rs. 15,000/- or so expected from sales by Perch of the Ms. Meena soundtrack.
The good news is that we entered the new fiscal year better-funded than before. But it also means that we will have to raise funds separately for the 2012 Prajnya 16 Days Campaign against Gender Violence, which is both our most high-profile and most expensive activity.
What we had not asked for was the kind of seed support that allows us to have a team that works full-time, for a living wage, and for space to house that team and some of our activities. That was too much to put together from individual donations, however generous.
We hope that at the end of this year, when you look at how we use your donations, you will feel like we were a good team to support and that we met your hopes and expectation in substantial measure. Without your support, we could do nothing at all. Thank you!
This week was marginally better… one cheque for Rs. 2000/- arrived. We know about Rs. 12500/- at least is on its way.
The terrific news about our fundraising drive is that this Rs. 100,000/- we’ve raised is mainly from individuals. This means people are looking at their household expenses, their savings, their investments and finding a few thousand here and there to put towards our work because they think these are important causes (and that we make an honest effort). This is beyond amazing!
But we now need to get a few of those slightly larger chunks that only corporate entities and foundations can afford. They too can avail of the 80G tax benefit and this is the time to do that–the coming four weeks. Would you be our advocate? Would you please help us reach people who might support us but do not know about our work?
This might help: What you enable.
Thank you so much!
Prajnya 2012 Fundraising Appeal
Please share with anyone you think might prefer this format to our original appeal letter.
This week, we received ZERO new donations. Yes, there are promises pending and at least one cheque in the mail, but especially in fundraising, a bird in the hand is worth many in the bush.
As Managing Trustee, I share credit for Prajnya’s successes but all our shortcomings are a function of my own failures. So on a morning like this, I am left asking: what more could I have done?
One route we have thought about often but never really pursued, largely because we end up being so overstretched and short of time, is to approach individuals in the corporate sector and ask for large donations. While we are a little leery of a “XYZ Pvt Ltd” sponsors Prajnya situation, we realise that our rock-solid support base of individuals cannot meet our needs. Most individual donations are in the range of 500-5000 Rs, and this goes a very long way because we are so frugal. However, having raised only 1 lakh where we need 8, we have to acknowledge that a few donations of 50K, for instance, could really help us without breaking a corporate’s back.
People who get to know us, are ready to help out. But how to get them to get to know us? This chicken-egg roundabout has me dizzy!
What we’ve learnt is that most MBA gyaan does not work for us. And fundraising tips are most suited to charity or service NGOs, not people like us. It’s been a steep learning curve but we’re learning now that it’s our story, in our voice, told our way, that gets us the most sympathetic listening and solid support. But how to get someone to give us that kind of time?
All thoughts buzzing around in my head. 
On January 1, 2012, Prajnya launched a fundraising drive with the goal of raising INR 800,000/- by March 31, 2012. The funds will be set aside for use in 2012-13 for activities across the Prajnya Initiatives.
Pasted below is our fundraising appeal letter, and graphic updates are placed online weekly.
Thank you for your support!
Dear friend,
A very happy new year to you from all of us at Prajnya!
Every new year, indeed every festival, becomes a time to both look back and look ahead, to see how far we’ve come, and to imagine the journey we want to undertake. When I look back, it’s hard to believe where we’ve come in the four years since our launch. Someone once gave me a paperweight that said ideas only work when you do; it would be hard to say the Prajnya team has not worked extremely hard!
The Prajnya 16 Days Campaign against Gender Violence. Oral history interviews. Women’s History Roundtable Series. Short research projects. A directory of Chennai women’s organizations. The Prajnya Archives and Rainmakers.
Every one of these felt like a leap in the dark when we started, and now… now, we stand at the beginning of this calendar year with a realistic sense of what we want to do and what we can do. In 2012, the Prajnya team hopes to consolidate and build upon its current projects, adding new dimensions to each of these. And I am now writing to ask you to join us in making our work possible.
For the projects that belong to the Prajnya Resource Centre on Women in Politics and Policy, this means systematically organizing the oral history recordings and transcripts we do have. Backing up, transcribing and editing the recordings for use have been beyond our reach but as the number of recordings mounts, we are worried about not having this done. Building on the success of the Rainmakers call and exhibition, we would like to reach out further to enrich the collection of the Prajnya Archives. To this end, we dream about putting out a call for photos, going out to different sites and setting up ‘collection camps’. We would like to set aside a small amount of money to cover such costs and the costs of the Archives site, of course.
You probably knew us first through our gender violence awareness work. Our Gender Violence Research and Information Taskforce (GRIT@Prajnya) is ready to scale up. The three main components of GRIT’s work are awareness workshops and events; the 16 Days Campaign, and the Gender Violence Report. Most recently, we launched Hollaback! Chennai, the local chapter of a global campaign against street sexual harassment.
As you know, our team consists entirely of volunteers except for one position during the campaign season. Therefore, our costs for the GRIT workshops and the Prajnya 16 Days Campaign are mostly related to venue, materials and communications. Similarly, our research and information projects on gender violence are researched and written by volunteers, but we would like to make them widely available. We post everything online, but even today, there are some people for whom Internet access is unreliable and we would like to be able to send them hard copies for their use. Our ‘ask’ in this appeal for support includes such costs as well.
Prajnya’s Education for Peace Initiative received pre-launch research funding but since then, fundraising for our school projects has been a challenge. Nevertheless, we have worked hard to keep this flame burning—writing papers and articles as requested, participating in local conferences and seminars and organizing small events. In 2011, this led to Prajnya team members contributing three essays on peace and peace education to a special issue on peace-building compiled by the journal, Agenda. We are also working with partners on putting together a book on peace stories that we hope will be the first of a series.
Finally, we do want to raise a small percentage of our budget towards administration. It is extremely important to us that we keep good records; particularly financial; get good advice on accounting and legal matters; communicate effectively and make all our documents publicly accessible. How can we ask for change in the world if we don’t try our best to match the standards we would advocate for others? We work out of donated space and volunteer our time; but even so, we do have some administrative costs that have risen as a corollary of our growth. We would like to enter 2012-13 assured of having them covered.
We stand at the threshold of a new phase in Prajnya’s growth and are approaching resource mobilization in a different way from usual. We anticipate that the costs of doing all the work we want to do in 2012-13 will amount to just under Rs. 800,000/-. We hope that you will help us raise this amount before March 31, 2012, so that we can hit the ground running in the new financial year.
We know you support our work; that is why we are writing to you. We are hoping that all our friends and supporters will chip in a little bit to express their ownership of our vision and values. Every contribution—from Rs. 101/- to Rs. 100,001/- —is important to us, because it tells us you are in our corner. If you would like to support us with a donation, the information that you require is online.
We also invite you to speak for us and about us to others; this is also an opportunity to reach out to new friends and to add to the support base for our work.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this, and for your support!
Our best wishes to you for the coming year!
On behalf of the Prajnya team,
Swarna Rajagopalan
Managing Trustee
Since its founding, there have been changes in the Prajnya Board of Trustees.
Ratna Mukherjee, Sudha Ramachandran and Jaya Menon have left the Board of Trustees.
On January 4, 2009, Dr. D. Jayashree joined as a Prajnya Trustee. She is an Ayurvedic physician by profession.
Carnatic musician S.Sowmya was invited to join the Prajnya Board of Trustees on September 4, 2010.
The present composition of the Board of Trustees is Swarna Rajagopalan, Shilpa Anand, D.Jayashree and S.Sowmya.
March 8, 2008 We held the first Prajnya Intercollegiate Quiz on Women in South Asia.
“The “Women In South Asia” quiz is part of Prajnya PSW’s public education work. Five Chennai women’s colleges participated–Ethiraj, MOP Vaishnav, Queen Mary’s, Stella Maris and WCC. M.O.P. Vaishnav’s team won and Stella Maris came in second. Enthusiasm was great among teams and audience.”
Read more here. And here you can see our banner flapping in the wind for the first time.
We also inaugurated The PSW Weblog that day. And you will see in the earliest posts that we could barely believe we were getting to do any of the things we’d dreamt of. As Swarna wrote,
“The moment at which people who were till recently (one month, one year, one hour ago) strangers, work together to string a banner that reads “Prajnya Intercollegiate Quiz” across a driveway, is a moment at which you think: if I touch it, it will not go away.”
April 2008 We compiled our first Annual Report!
May 15, 2008 Prajnya’s first group of summer research interns came on board. We organized a two-day training, and they wrote short papers for us.Take a look at their ‘graduation’ photos here.
July 21, 2008 The first Prajnya Roundtable was held featuring Dr. Linda Racioppi who spoke on her research in Russia and Ireland on women in peace movements. In March 2009, we launched a monthly roundtable series under the rubric “Prajnya Women’s History Roundtables.”
October 2008 We published the first Prajnya research project: Sweta Narayanan’s Women Taking Action: A Survey of Chennai Women’s Organisations. (This has recently been updated.)
October 16, 2008 We received the first instalment of our first research grant, which came from the Sir Ratan Tata Trust. The grant supported three pre-launch research studies, which are available here.
November 13, 2008 We received approval under 80G of the Income Tax Act! This meant all our donors could receive 50% tax deduction on their donations, and their generosity would have some tangible reward.
November 25, 2008 The first Prajnya 16 Days Campaign against Gender Violence began. This has been our most visible activity since 2008, and the one that most people first know us by. Read about the highs and lows of the first campaign at the blog dedicated to chronicling each of our campaigns. All materials relating to our campaigns, including our media and other information initiatives are available here.
August 4, 2009 Prajnya’s Education for Peace Initiative had its first programme, a seminar where the three Sir Ratan Tata Trust projects were presented to a small group of educators and educationists. You can see a photo of all those present at The Peace Blog, which we launched that day.
September 28, 2009 The Prajnya Archives were launched, a user-generated repository of visual images that document women’s participation and work in the public sphere.
October 31, 2009 We went to meet the person who featured in our first LifeStories interview.
“We are really excited to be finally doing this. LifeStories is one of our dream projects, and while we still don’t have any funding for it, we are getting started using our personal resources because we cannot wait any more.”
Lead researcher, Uma Vangal, wrote:
“For us, it was long held dream come true to begin this oral history project. And the first one only whetted our appetite. To many more such wonderful memories as we continue with this effort!”
January 2010 The Gender Violence Research and Information Taskforce (GRIT@Prajnya) was set up to create a systematic agenda for research and public education on gender violence. After two years of doing the Prajnya 16 Days Campaign against Gender Violence and a series of information initiatives along with it, we really felt the need for a year-long, full-time programme. GRIT blogs here.
August 2010 Two Prajnya researchers presented papers at the Madras School of Social Work conference, our first outing as Prajnya researchers!
January 2011 Prajnya’s first Saakshi Fellow arrived in Chennai. Dr. Linda Racioppi will be affiliated with Prajnya as Saakshi Fellow for her project on gender politics in post-disaster contexts.
August 5-7, 2011 Our call for photographs of “Rainmakers” resulted in our first public exhibition.
September 16, 2011 The first GRIT research seminar was held in Chennai on gender violence data collection challenges.
The exercise of writing this post has been awesome. We can’t believe how much we’ve done, and yet, we’ve barely begun! There’s so much left to do!
