Annual Report 2017-18 Our Vision Tathapi will be known as a small group with a large impact, relevantly engaged at the grassroots level throughout Maharashtra. Communication from us will be seen as giving voice to the people’s perceptions, concerns and needs. Tathapi’s resource centre will be a place that local workers from all over the state call their own. Our Mission Tathapi promotes innovative women and health training and advocacy initiatives for community health and development in Maharashtra through special emphasis on women’s empowerment and substantive equality for all. Our values • Women’s democratic rights encompass all matters of choice in their life. • People have a right to health and healthcare. • People have a right to conserve and develop their health traditions. • Justice demands affirmative action for disadvantaged communities. • Continuous growth in our capacity for effective social interventions. 2 Introduction This year Tathapi’s work was focused more on the issues regarding Sexuality. Our Website saw a record breaking traffic in last 12 months. We crossed the mark of One Million hits. This overwhelming response made us to reconstruct the website and increase the strength of the infrastructure. We took this opportunity to make the website more user-friendly, mobile friendly and attractive. Also the review done in last year helped us in improving our content. This was the year where we started using social media more seriously to promote the website innovatively. One of the main objectives of the social media campaign was to engage the reader in more meaningful way. We could do that, thanks also to the campaigns we undertook to establish direct dialogue with youth across the state especially from rural parts of the state. We observed that the flow of questions and comments started increasing after these sessions. Podcasts was a new venture where Team Tathapi especially the seniors found a new joy of being involved in creative work. Podcasts brought many new readers to the website and proved to be an interesting and ‘with the time’ way of spreading messages. Because of the constant work in the area of Disability and Sexuality Tathapi especially the work on the ‘intellectual disability and sexuality’ is now being looked upon as a vital unit in this area. People recognise Tathapi’s contribution. We have reached many individuals and professionals and organisations across the state and they find this work useful and important. We could successfully disseminate the resources created throughout last 2-3 years time across a considerable section in the society. This work is benefiting especially the parents and teachers who directly influence the lives of the intellectually challenged adolescents and adults. The exposure till now we have got in the area is now enough for us to come out with some concrete tools and resources for the focused group in this work which will help them practically. This is the year where again we ended our association with some of the partners and started a new page of cooperation and collaborations. We express our gratitude towards National Foundation for India, New Delhi and TPCDT, Lonavala, Jatar Trust from Pune, Maharshtra Foundation from USA (our new partner) and all other doners and supporters for the support. 3 1.I Soch – Let’s Talk Sexuality for a safer city The project, ‘I SOCH: Let’s Talk Sexuality for a Safer Pune!’ was initiated by Tathapi in 2014 to create a positive and affirmative environment around sexuality based on rights and responsibilities, equality and diversity in selected Pune city colleges. Youth Innovation Fund of National Foundation for India has been supporting this initiative since inception of this project. The project came to an end in this year. The project aimed to reach out to youth (16-24) through different media including the internet and the mobile phone to generate dialogue and discussion around sexuality. During the course of four years (2014 to 2018) it has been observed that the website letstalksxualtiy. com is most successful intervention and receiving overwhelming response. So we concentrated our focus on website centric work in order to promote positive dialogue around sexuality using this medium. A. letstalksesuality.com One of the objectives of the website, letstalksexuality.com which was launched on July 2015 is to create a platform for discussion, and promote perspectives around values of equality, safety, pleasure, diversity, etc. The website has been receiving an overwhelming response since then. Website received more than 6 lacs hits in last one year while total hits are more than 11 lacs. (Source- Google Analytics) Highlights of the website – Till March 2018 • website mentions complete anonymity of the users • The website has received more than 11 lacs hits within last 2 years and 6 months. (July 2015 - March 2018) • Website has daily 2700 + visitors • The articles (400+) on website has views ranging from 1,35,000 + to 100 • Articles under ‘Sex Bole To’ & ‘Our Bodies’ category, Q&A (351,422 views) and FAQ section (150,132 views) are the most popular sections on website and has maximum views • Around 2300 questions have been asked and answered under Question Answer section. Currently, we are receiving 4-5 questions a day. • Poll has average response of around 500 votes • Maximum users (78%) of the website are from age group of 18-35 years (source- Google Analytics). • 64% users are male and 36% are female. (Source- Google Analytics). 4 B. Content creation: This year we created and published a range of posts on the website. May it be articles, poems, videos, podcasts, film reviews or stories and it gathered a good amount of views and also comments from the users. Total 150 posts were published on website in last one year which has views ranging from 100 to 4200+. Over all Q&A, Sex Bole TO, Our Bodies & FAQs are most popular sections on website. ‘Question Answers’ is a section on the website where viewers can ask their queries. This section makes the portal a most engaging and interactive place. This year we have answered around 1400+ questions (2300 + so far) on website. The questions reveal the confusion, guilt, low self esteem, fears, anxiety, misinformation and myths about youth’s own sexuality. On an average we receive and answer at least 4-5 questions every day. A team of 4 persons answers the questions regularly. The experts in legal, medical and social field help us in answering some of the specific questions related to illnesses, infections, medicines, homophobia, sexual identities, Relationships etc. Question/Answer page is the highest viewed page on website. This page (http://letstalksexuality.com/question/) has 351,422 views & FAQ section http://letstalksexuality.com/category/faq/) has 1,50,132 page views. (Source- Google analytics) Opinion Poll is another interactive platform on the portal. This platform has average 500 respondents. The topics like ‘Tin Talak, Use of pills to delay the menses, Misuse of technology like Sonography, Menstrual Leave, Marital rape needs to be considered as a crime, sexual harassment, Ban on condom advertisements in day time’ were some of the topics discussed on this platform. We started a new ‘cartoon corner’ on website called ‘FUQ’ i.e. Frequently Unanswered Questions. These are illustrations by Pune based artist Ms. Rutuja Janhavi, where four friends talk openly on current affairs and day today happenings around different aspects of sexuality. This has views ranging from 70 to 700+ on website. 5 C. Podcasts : Podcast is a growing trend and a proven medium. It has the ability to relate information into digestible pieces of information, through human voices and visual imagery. We have initiated ‘Let’s Talk Sexuality Podcast’ as a place to discuss different aspects and approaches towards sexuality. 1. English Podcast are basically stories by renowned writers from different parts of India that speak about love, relationships, sexuality and human emotions. We collaborated with ‘The Story Tellers’ from Pune for English podcasts. It is a group of friends that mainly concerned about and working towards setting up spaces for community based activities by ‘telling stories’. Total 15 podcasts were published in this year. Podcasts have views ranging from 170 to 750 + on website. Remaining podcasts will be published as per schedule i.e., on 1st and 15th day of every month. 2. Marathi Podcasts - Sex ani barach kahi It is a conversation between two friends on different aspects of sexuality. This podcast aims to discuss values around sexuality and youth’s concerns. Different topics in young minds like sex, sexuality, love, infatuation, intimacy, sexual relations, violence, pressure, etc are being discussed openly. We invite experts & activists in this field as a guest in this podcast. Bindumadhav Khire (LGBTI activists), Shailesh Bhutka (Gay activist) Disha Kene (Transgender activists), Ujjwal Nene (Psychologist in Sexuality Clinic at KEM Hospital in Pune), Nandita Ambike (expert in the field of sexuality and Child Sexual Abuse), Dr. Vasudev Paralikar (Psychiatrist) have contributed in these podcasts. We have created 13 podcasts so far. One can listen to the podcasts on http://letstalksexuality.com/category/ podcasts/ and https://soundcloud.com/tathapi. D. Interactions with youth This year we decided to expand our outreach to comparatively smaller cities and rural districts of Maharashtra. We could reach out to Mumbai, Beed, Aurangabad, Satara, Solapur & Osmanabad districts through these campaigns. 6 We conducted sessions, programs & events with 9 institutes including colleges, organizations & voluntary groups. We could personally reach out to more than 1100 people through these website promotional interactive programs and campaigns. It has been observed that, flow of questions on the website have increased on the topics discussed in these programs with youth. This understanding helps in created need based & youth centric content on website.