Most Promising Individual

Augustina Soreng

Augustina Soreng is a social activist, working independently for the upliftment of tribal women and girls in Simdega district, Jharkhand, in accordance with the rights guaranteed under the Constitution of India.

A tribal woman from Jharkhand, Augustina has been working in the districts of Simdega, Gumla and Khunti of the South Chotanagpur division of Jharkhand for the past 13 years. Since 2009, she has focused on addressing the challenges faced by women in tribal communities, where traditional patriarchy and the division of labour means that women and girls often bear the brunt of labour, leading to the deprivation of education, rights, and freedom.

Augustina’s work spans various sections of society, aiming to raise awareness about issues particularly affecting tribal women, such as migration, human trafficking, witch-hunting, domestic violence, sexual violence, forest rights, and land rights.

Best Organization for Gender Equality

Mahila Abhivrudhi Mattu Samrakshana Samsthe (MASS)

Mahila Abhivruddhi Mattu SamrakshanaSamsthe (MASS) is a grassroots organisation based in Belgaum district, Karnataka. Established in 1997, MASS is a membership association led by ex-Devadasi women, working to dismantle the harmful Devadasi system and empower Dalit women and children, ensuring their rights, livelihoods, and a life of dignity.

The Devadasi system is a deeply entrenched practice in parts of India, where young Dalit girls are dedicated to a deity and forced into a life of exploitation, often including prostitution. MASS’s mission is twofold:

  • Eradicate the Devadasi system: MASS raises awareness about the dangers of the Devadasi system, in order to prevent its revival, and provides support services to ex-Devadasi women and their families.

  • Empower Dalit women and children: MASS creates opportunities for economic independence, education, healthcare, and legal aid, ensuring a brighter future for generations to come.

Most Promising Individual

Mohini Devi

Mohini is a women's rights and Dalit rights activist from Karnal, Haryana. She is the founder of Avira Foundation, a lawyer, and a core member of Dalit Women Fight. Mohini identifies and advocates for justice in cases of sexual harassment, rape, and caste-based atrocities. She collectivizes and mentors women and girls as community leaders, through community-based Youth Groups, and has also worked to facilitate girls’ leadership and educational attainment, and to identify and mitigate caste-based and gender-based violence and discrimination

Best Organization for Gender Equality

Nari-O-Sishu Kalyan Kendra

Nari-O-Sishu Kalyan Kendra, established in Howrah, West Bengal in 1979, works to mitigate Gender Based Violence and Discrimination, and to facilitate and advocate for the socio-economic empowerment, political inclusion, and rights and welfare of women, children, migrant workers, minorities, and other vulnerable groups in West Bengal and Jharkhand. NOSKK is a women-led organisation, with a Governing Board composed of seven women, all of whom have decades of experience in working on NOSKK programs on the ground. They continue to provide consistent opportunities for capacity building and leadership positions to their predominantly female and locally recruited team and have implemented comprehensive policies and best practices to ensure the welfare and safety of their team members.

Most Promising Individual

Grace Banu

Grace Banu is India's first transgender engineer and co-founder of Transgender Rights Now (TRN) Collective,an organization working towards gender equalityand forwarding the rights of transgender persons. A Dalit person from Tamil Nadu, Grace has personally helped hundreds of transgender persons access education, healthcare,and employment, and worked towards enabling trans representation in leadership across sectors.

Best Organization for Gender Equality

Archana Women's Centre

Founded in 2004 by Thresiamma Mathew, AWC is a Kerala-based organization working towards women’s empowerment by enabling the participation of women in traditionally male-dominated fields. Through its work, AWC supports women's access to financial and social inclusion and empowerment. AWC’s commitment to women’s empowerment is outward and inward-facing, empowering the community and employees simultaneously.

Most Promising Individual

Deepa Pawar

Deepa Pawar is the founder-director of Anubhuti Charitable Trust, and has founded and built up perhaps one of the only Nomadic and De-notified Tribe (NT-DNT) woman-led organizations in the country. Through her organization, Deepa works for intersectional gender justice at the grassroots level, including with NT-DNT communities. Deepa embodies Dr. Farrell’s principles of ‘feminism in everyday life’, and includes a feminist praxis lens in each aspect of her life.

Best Organization for Gender Equality

Shaheen Women’s Resource and Welfare Association

Established in 2002, Shaheen Women’s Resource and Welfare Association is a grassroots organization in the Old City of Hyderabad, committed to the cause of women’s rights and communal harmony. Shaheen’s unique position to support Muslim, Dalit, and OBC communities is facilitated from its location where intersections of gender, caste, religion, and class have led to multiple forms of oppression for women. Shaheen’s commitment to protecting its employees exemplifies institutional safeguards toward making workplaces safe.

Most Promising Individual

Mamta Singh

An exemplar of true grit and determination, Mamta Singh has been an unwavering support system to the women who have sought her help in times of grave danger and hardship. Over the past 16 years, she has worked with reputed organizations in Lucknow where she is based, including the likes of Humsafar Foundation, Sahayog and AALI, to develop and lead initiatives capacitating at-risk women through vocational education, creating safe spaces for survivors, besides helping them acquire justice.

On numerous occasions, she has been known to take great personal risks in pursuit of justice, persistently negotiating with the police or going up against fierce mobs to ensure that the path of due process remains unimpeded.

The communities she has worked with in Hardoi and Unnao as well as the informal settlements in Lucknow are brimming with youth and women leaders whom she has taken under her wing and who share her zeal for rights-based community action.

Best Organization for Gender Equality

Shaheen Rural and Environment Development Society (REDS)

Established in 1996, REDS capacitates and collectivises women farmers of rural Andhra Pradesh and supports survivors in their midst. The organization, helmed by Ms. Bhanuja Cheruvu, works in villages in and around Anantapur, providing psycho-social, economic, and legal support to survivors of human trafficking and domestic violence. Their initiatives intersect with climate justice and women agricultural workers’ rights, as a means to achieve sustainable rural development. Women are encouraged to take on leadership roles within the organization, which mandates that women constitute 50% of its staff. It doesn’t end with advocating for women’s representation at public forums, farmers’ meetings, and village committees; women are empowered to participate actively and assume decision-making roles in these spaces.

Spreading awareness on land rights, REDS also leads critical campaigns in asserting community ownership of natural resources. The organization has also notably rescued and rehabilitated women and underage laborers from being trafficked abroad, besides working on other youth-based issues such as high drop-out rates at public schools.

Most Promising Individual

Manu Gulati

Committed to bringing gender parity in education, Manu Gulati, a 35 year old government school teacher in Delhi, has been evolving and implementing gender-synchronized teaching approaches in schools for the past 13 years, which help identify and address the unique barriers that keep girls out of school. Her journey began when she joined a government school in a low-income community in West Delhi in 2006. To empower her girl students, Manu started focusing on increasing their participation in life skills education, enhancing their academic output, and sensitizing, motivating, and mobilizing community structures (teachers, community heads, families and peers) in and around schools, to eliminate cultural barriers that deter girls from pursuing education. Manu is also working with boys to build a gender equitable environment, where all students can learn, thrive and grow.

Best Organization for Gender Equality

Mahila Jan Adhikar Samiti (MJAS)

Mahila Jan Adhikar Samiti (MJAS) is a women-led organization, focusing on the empowerment of adolescent girls, so that they are not coerced into early/child/forced marriages. Through the aid of sport and technology, it has been focusing on elevating the visibility and status of girls, by building their life skills and knowledge. 400 such girls have emerged as leaders and peer-educators, who are also now engaging with their communities, including adult and elderly men to engage with issues of gender-based violence. MJAS also believes in intensive feminist training of all its employees. Many girl champions that have emerged as leaders from the community also work with MJAS and are supported in completing their education.

Most Promising Individual

Nadiya Shafi

Armed with her camera and an urge to tell hidden stories, Nadiya Shafi, a video reporter is defying social norms in her conflict ridden home state of Jammu and Kashmir. For the last seven years, she has been bringing out stories of Kashmiri women, whose lives have been marred by the armed conflict and a patriarchal society. These stories, which are often ignored by the national and local media, are now giving voice to the unseen and unheard women of Kashmir. She was also the first one to uncover the violence faced by Transgender people in Kashmir. Today, she is leading gender discussion clubs in Srinagar to enable a safe space for students, labourers, farmers, housewives and artisans to discuss issues related to gender, sexuality and religion.

Best Organization for Gender Equality

Resource and Support Centre for Development (RSCD)

RSCD was founded in 1994, as a network campaign promoting a vision of a society where equal and appropriate opportunities are ensured for all. In the year 2000, they initiated the Mahilla Rajsatta Andolan (MRA), which is a state-wide campaign for women in governance in Maharashtra. Within a span of 17 years, this campaign has successfully pushed for several policy changes to strengthen women’s participation and leadership in the Panchayati Raj. Currently, RSCD is working in 30 districts of Maharashtra, with a regional network of over 150 CSOs and with over 3000 elected women representatives.

The senior leadership and district teams of RSCD comprise only women. They also provide for special platforms, forums and workshops, where they train male sarpanches and panchs on various aspects of gender and governance. RSCD encourages all its employees and members to make their personal lives a part of their political and professional lives and transform the gendered status quo within their families, communities and workplaces.

Most Promising Individual

Rakhi Gope

Rakhi Gope is a resident of a tea estate in Falakata in Alipurduar District of West Bengal, who has been leading the fight against child trafficking within her community, for the last 11 years. She has been working in an extremely difficult context, where she has faced numerous threats to her life. She has rescued hundreds of victims of trafficking and facilitated their rehabilitation by linking them to government-sponsored livelihood and shelter programmes. Rakhi works in 134 villages, which comprise more than 75,000 households, where she has mobilized and sensitized the community, to become alert towards trafficking and prevent it within their families. She has also worked effectively with the local administration and serves on the Child Welfare Committee (CWC). At the young age of 31, Rakhi is an inspiration to many young girls and women in her community, for whom she envisions a safe and a violence free future.

Most Promising Individual

Majlis Legal Center

Majlis Legal Centre was founded in 1991 by Advocate Flavia Agnes. It is an all-women organization, based in Mumbai, which is dedicated to providing legal support and legal training to women. It believes in women’s rights lawyering by women. It has defended over 50,000 women in Maharashtra in their struggle against domestic violence and sexual violence and has trained over 4,000 women lawyers on various laws related to women’s rights. Majlis has employed only women since their inception and currently, they are a team of 35 women lawyers and social activists, who work on issues of domestic violence and sexual violence. To sustain their all-women team, Majlis provides for a very caring and a supportive workplace for all their employees. The employees, who have recently given birth or have young children, are provided work suitable to their needs (part-time/flexi time/work from home). They can also bring their children to office.