KUDOS: On Women’s Day March 8, 2019, the Goa Citizen’s Action Forum (GCAF) selected Goan NGO Nari Adhikar’s president, Adv Diya Shetkar of Shiroda, for the ‘Leading Goan Woman Social Worker” award. The jury comprising of various prominent Goans was unanimous in its decision to select Adv Diya Shetkar for her continuous work in the field of free legal aid to underprivileged women across Goa. Irrespective of any political affiliation, she has helped hundreds of families and residents with legal issues, court matters and provided free legal advice and legal aid to the residents of Shiroda and the scheduled tribes of the area. She has even paid their legal duties where applicable in court!

By GO Team

The Ministry of Women and Child Development hosted a felicitation event for Web Wonder Women, a campaign organised to celebrate the exceptional achievements of women, who have been driving social reforms via social media. As many as 30 women, who were selected after an extensive research process, were honoured by the Minister for Women and Child Development, Smt Maneka Sanjay Gandhi in New Delhi, on March 6, 2019.
Organised in collaboration with Twitter India and Breakthrough India, the event aimed to recognise the fortitude of Indian women stalwarts from across the globe who have used the power of social media to run positive campaigns to steer a change in society.

1. Adhunika Prakash is the founder and CEO of Breastfeeding Support for Indian Mothers (BSIM).
2. Afreen Siddiqui Sherwani is a passionate development professional with over 11 years of working with the Gram Panchayats to policy makers and the United Nations.
3. Ankita Anand is an independent journalist-writer-poet with a focus on social justice issues.
4. Archana KR is from a village near Sakleshpur, Karnataka, a change-maker with change.org.
5. Chavi Vohra is a development professional, experienced in promoting children rights, women’s empowerment and youth development co-curator of @SDG2030.
6. Dr Angela Chaudhuri is a B.D.S, M.P.H and P G Diploma in Journalism. She is Director, Swasti Health Catalyst, on the board of Catalyst Group of Institutions, IDEX Global Accelerator, AIDS Asia Pacific, PMNCH and part of the MIT Solve Leadership group.
7. Dr Saundarya Rajesh, social entrepreneur, Founder-President of AVTAR Group – Dr Rajesh has created the largest impact on adolescent girls through her Project PUTHRI.
8. Dr Anubhuti Yadav is the Head of Department of New Media and Course Director of Advertising and Public Relations Course at the IIMC. Her work in educational media won her four national awards.
9. Dr Debarati Halder, Ph.D, is an Advocate & Honorary Managing Director of the Centre for Cyber Victim Counselling. She is the Founder-Secretary of the South Asian Society of Criminology and Victimology and the Global advisory committee member for International Society for Therapeutic Jurisprudence.
10. Dr Laxmi Gautam is an associate professor in Vrindavan who is constantly working to ensure justice for women abandoned by families. She founded an organization “Kanak Dhara” which works for women and children welfare.
11. JapleenPasricha smashes the patriarchy for a living. She is the founder & editor-in-chief of Feminism in India, an award-winning digital feminist media platform. She is also a TEDx speaker and a UN World Summit Young Innovator.
12. Madhulika Choudhary is a Software Engineer. Through Twitter, she started providing awareness about the difference between urban & rural lakes, domestic & industrial sewage, easy techniques for wastewater remediation. She is involved in converting sewage water into fresh water daily using phytoremediation techniques in Neknampur lake.
13. Nmami Agarwal is the founder of Nmami Life — a platform for spreading awareness and educating people about the therapeutic benefits and holistic healing powers of food.
14. ParomitaBardoloi is an Independent writer, poet and a spoken word artist.
15. Parul Mathur has been tirelessly working on the issues of gender equality and women health. She is also working on raising awareness about Cervical Cancer in India.
16. SaginaWalyat is a lawyer by profession. She has raised a demand for bulletproof jackets for the Indian soldiers on social media. She also done a national campaign on sexual harassment of women at workplace in 2018.
17. Dr Shruti Kapoor is the founder of Sayfty and an award-winning gender equality activist. Shaken by the horrific gang rape in Delhi 2012, she founded her organization, Sayfty to educate and empower women and girls of India against gender-based violence.
18. Shweta Pathak leveraged social media platforms like Twitter to bring people with the same purpose & passion together, for positive change. She has been actively involved in building & managing communities to drive positive change by collaboration.
19. Smt Sonal Goel, IAS is 2008 Batch Officer, All India 13th Rank, currently posted as Deputy Commissioner, Jhajjar, Haryana. She is leveraging the power of social media including Twitter to improvise G2C & C2G Governance.
20. Sonal Kapoor is one of the youngest members of the expert committee on anti-child trafficking (Delhi Commission of Women) and a member of the CSO Coalition to End Child Marriage in India. She has rescued 826 girls from points of Child Abuse, mainstreamed them through quality education and life skills. She founded Protsahan, nine years back, to prevent & heal the trauma of child sexual abuse.
21. Srilekha Chakraborty is a Gender Rights Activist working with the Adivasis in Jharkhand.
22. Supreet K. Singh A writer, film director, a gender activist and partner at Red Dot Foundation, Safecity, Supreet has transitioned from 15 years of corporate experience to being an award-winning filmmaker & running an NGO.
23. Vinita Deshmukh is an award-winning author and a senior journalist of 30 years vintage and presently, Consulting Editor of Corporate Citizen magazine and Moneylife online finance daily. Vinita uses the dual power of the Right to Information Act for her investigative stories and Twitter to amplify them.
24. Ritu Maheshwari is presently serving as the District Magistrate, Ghaziabad, U.P. On her official twitter handle, she posts tweets related to Govt. policies, schemes, cleanliness, health and hygiene, women’s safety and public awareness, etc. which directly benefits citizens.
25. Kirthi Jayakumar is a peacebuilder, peace educator and gender equality activist. She founded and runs the Red Elephant Foundation, and uses Twitter to talk about issues centred on peace, gender, and structural violence.
26. Urvashi Sarkar uses Twitter to share insight, observations about a social process, or highlighting an event which should receive attention.
27. Sohini Chattopadhyay is an awardwinning reporter and writer, who has been published in multiple international publications. She has published groundbreaking reportage on women’s health, particularly on maternal health and the predominance of women among living organ donors in India.
    Twitter-Breakthrough voting winners
28. Manu Khajuria Handle: @KhajuriaManu Profession: Freelance Writer and Community Activist. Founder of Voice of Dogras, a Community Organization.
29. Rishika Sharma Handle: @artistrishika Profession: Self-taught artist.
30. Rakshita Dwivedi Handle: @Raks_d Profession: Food Entrepreneur. Founder of Recipe Dabba, which empowers families with healthy choices.

IHCL OPPORTUNITIES FOR WOMEN!
The Indian Hotels Company Limited (IHCL), South Asia’s largest hospitality company was recently recognized amongst the 50 Most Inclusive Businesses in India by the Institute for Strategy & Competitiveness at Harvard Business School. It has also emerged as one of the Top 100 best companies for ‘Working Women in India’ consistently for the last three years by ‘Working Mother’ & ‘AVTAR’.
Furthering its commitment to skilling under-served communities and regions, IHCL recently announced Diversity including Women at IHCL – DiWA. It is a six-month intensive training programme to induct women at its hotels across departments to improve their participation in the workforce.
Dr PV Murthy, Executive Vice-President and Global Head – Human Resources, IHCL said “In our endeavour to drive gender balance at the workplace, we pioneered the practice of including IVF treatments in the medical reimbursement policy. Furthermore, we have committed to filling 50% of our available vacancies with women candidates during campus recruitment.”