On November 11, 2020, the Government of Telangana finally decided to launch an exclusive Telangana Women’s Commission website. On December 3, 2020, the Telangana High Court gave an ultimatum to the government that by December 31, a new chairperson for the commission needs to be appointed. WomComMatters, a group launched by Spurthi Kolipaka, is a group that has been advocating for a separate women's commission for over two years now and have finally tasted success. Yet, they do believe they have a long way to go. And if you are willing, they are more than happy to welcome you onboard too as a fellow via their first-ever Awaaz-e-Telangana Fellowship.
"Since we were making a lot of progress as a group, we wanted to share the knowledge and experience and empower the women of Telangana. Hence, we decided to introduce this fellowship," says Manju Muthaiya, Communications Incharge for Awaaz-e-Telangana Fellowship. Now get this, this fellowship is for any woman or transwoman between the ages of 16 to 50! The only asks are a stable internet connection (because this is a virtual fellowship) and knowledge of both English and Telugu. Talking about the large age spectrum, the 30-year-old says, "The young are already engaged and we believe that transformation can happen at any age." So after you send in your application, if accepted, you will be a part of an online focus group discussion and then proceed to a one-on-one interview. After this, the 25 chosen ones will attend a six-day weekend virtual Learning Lab and then, the year-long fellowship commences.
And your takeaway from the whole experience? Manju puts it quite succinctly when she says, "By the end of it, one will have the confidence and tools with which they can take on any challenge." The fellowship will prepare you for this by having you work on five petitions, five action plans and five campaign pitches collaboratively. Then, 25 individual narratives as to what you've learnt from it all follows. Sounds exciting, right? "All this will really help those who are passionate about issues but aren't sure how to take it forward," says Manju, who is based out of Germany.
For all the men who are feeling left out, don't worry. Manju says that since this is their first cohort, they wanted to start with women and transwomen, but men will be more than welcome to apply to their next edition. But if you want to be a part of this edition, you better hurry because the application deadline is December 25!
History of women's commission
- Andhra Pradesh State Commission for Women was constituted in 1998
- The purpose was to improve their status and bring out unfair practices
- Telangana Women's Commission, a statutory body, has been running without a chairperson for two years
For more on them, check out womcommatters.in/awaaz
