Today, when we are still fighting the forces of patriarchy, voices and opinions of women — who constitute 50 per cent of the world's population — are often subdued or ignored. In many parts of the world, even today, women face a lot of societal barriers, cultural restrictions and a lack of opportunities. In order to bring together women's voices and make people realise the importance of self-worth, Fuzia, a global online networking community was launched in 2012. The platform is meant for both men and women who support the cause of women empowerment, feminism, equality and mutual support/upliftment. It enables people to showcase their talent and skills — be it through stories, blogs, poetry, photographs, articles, fashion, art, craft, videos or designs, along with building one another through creative expression, experiential learning, and mutual support.
Started as a writing club by an 11-year-old, Riya Sinha in 2012 and later joined by Shraddha Varma in 2015, Fuzia has emerged to become an online networking community with more than 50,000 members and over 4 million followers on social media. "Fuzia believes in 'she for she' and 'he for she' considering that true empowerment is incomplete without men supporting it. At Fuzia, we built a strong supportive community of women coming from different parts of the world, bringing them on a single online platform to encourage them to express themselves in different forms of creative expressions. Moreover, we believe that an empowered woman is a happy woman thus supporting happiness through six key elements — garnering relationships and friendships, learning and education, engagement and activities, wellness, charity and giving back and financial independence," says Shraddha.
Another interesting initiative by them is Fuzia.org, which is a social activism platform for local organisations and NGOs working towards causes related to education, women empowerment, upliftment of the unprivileged, women's health, acid attack victims, rape victims, the betterment of the transgender community and a lot more. "Currently, since we are mainly a digital-based platform, our rural reach is limited. However, to make sure that our impact is not lessened, we collaborate with many local NGOs to organise activities and fundraisers to do our bit towards upliftment and education of the underprivileged women and children. This platform helps immensely in achieving those goals," adds Shraddha.
Even before the pandemic led all of us to work from home or remotely, what's interesting about Fuzia is that it completely stands on a remote working concept from the beginning. Fuzia’s global team communicates through various online tools like slack, asana, video calls etc. Also, they have monthly and quarterly calls to keep the team connected and aligned on the same page. "Currently, we’re a team of over 30 passionate people who work remotely from different parts of the world. As we have been working remotely, it hasn’t been a great change for us. We have also taken various initiatives for not only our members but for every person in need out there in the world," adds Riya.
Fuzia organised numerous campaigns and activities to help people and keep their spirits up during the pandemic. They ran a mask awareness campaign called #FuziaFighters that aimed at spreading awareness about wearing masks globally. Apart from this, the team began a separate section on their website, Quarantimes and have also published a plethora of content to help people boost up their spirits and gather the courage to come out of this, slowly and gradually. Moreover, to promote happiness on their platform during this period Fuzia introduced a lot of fun games and activities. "We also introduced a segment called Humans of Fuzia, a unique storytelling platform to bring stories of powerful women from across the world to inspire people and provide an empowering experience to many more," concludes Shraddha.
