A note from Executive Director, Leora Kahn
Last week, with Smita Sharma, PROOF’s photographer in India, I traveled to New Delhi to worked with our partners to discuss the launching of our new exhibit in India entitled UNEARTHED: Stories of Sexual Violence and Courage. It was a whirlwind trip, meeting with various non-profits to see how PROOF should work on the extension of the Legacy of Rape project in India. The subject is rape, but the circumstances are not rape as a consequence of conflict, but of general violence in the country.
The trip proved productive as we met with our partner at National Foundation of India, Monica Banerjee, to talk about having the exhibition in the beautiful space at "The Habitat Center" in New Delhi. We also discussed programing around the event, who would be able to come, and what the intended audience would be. Monica felt that college students, along with policy makers and activists, are people we should reach out to.
With that in mind, Smita and I met with Abhishek Srivastava from Independent Television Service. Abhishek runs a program called The Hero’s Project, which aims to challenge men and boys by talking about harmful gender stereotypes, in an attempt to create a gender-equal society. PROOF’s UNEARTHED project, with survivors of rape as well as stories of those people who have stood up against rape, works well with the Hero’s Project, in that both exhibits attempt to bring together this audience with the role models that they can aspire to be.
The trip proved successful; along with these NGOs, we also established relationships with the Center for Social Research, whose amazing founder and director, Ranjana Kumari, will write the introduction for the exhibit.