Swakshatra is the Training unit of Home to Society. Swakshatra in Sanskrit means 'Self-Powerful', 'Innately Strong', 'Free', 'Independent' and 'Master of Oneself'. Our vision at Swakshatra, is to empower every woman and child to be a personification of the word 'Swakshatra'.

The 'H' in Swakshatra is the Chinese symbol for strength. For us this symbol represents our core belief that every woman brings to the table a fierce inner strength, and our hope and vision is to help her unleash this innate strength.

The difference between what we do and what we could do…..would suffice to solve most of the world's problems. - Gandhi
To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to women. If by strength is meant moral power then woman is immeasurably man's superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater power of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man would not be. If non-violence is the law of our being, the future is woman. I have nursed this thought now for years - Gandhi
Within every woman there is a wild and natural creature, a powerful force, filled with good instincts, passionate creativity and ageless knowing. Her name is wild woman but she is an endangered species. –Women who run with the wolves
The most common way people give up their power, is by thinking they don't have any – Alice Walker
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -Bernard Shaw
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About Us

Vision Statement: Our Vision is promoting welfare and safety of women and children, through a comprehensive community initiative. To develop safe and healthy neighborhoods through personal safety and life skills training, collaborative planning, community action, and policy advocacy.To create a thriving world community, by connecting women, ideas, skills and resources.

Mission Statement: Our Mission is to empower women by imparting training in personal safety and life skills, and fostering action competencies and positive behaviour that enable women to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life, and necessary for a self-sufficient existence and fulfillment in today's world.

Immediate Focus of Swakshatra: Considering the sorry state of safety and security of women and children in the present times, we have restricted the above mandate to personal safety training for women and children, for the next few years.

In our present focus, we believethat personal safety will be an outcome of heightened awareness of self and the environment, and development of competencies both physical and mental. Women empowerment is incomplete if one of the core values of a woman's existence, namely her safety, is dependent on the will and the effectiveness of external agencies such as the state and the establishment.

The power and will of the community will be key towards ensuring holistic safety of women. The thought here, is to shape the will of the community by shaping the psyche of 50% of a community's stakeholders, namely the women. The buy-in of this segment of the society, for the cause of holistic safety of women, is a given. Holistic safety of women cannot happen in isolation to measures by the state and communities. But the will of the women will be key in shaping these measures, which are severely wanting as on date. Swakshatra seeks to shape the approach of women towards their own safety, to one of self-sufficiency.

Key to this would be awareness of the following:

  • Environment
  • Possibilities
  • Personal Options
  • Bystander Responses
  • Present Establishment
  • State and Non-state Support Structures

Training personal response in the view of Home to Society, would be key towards ensuring safety of women. Personal response would be a function of multiple personal and environmental factors. Hence the base approach of Home to Society towards personal safety is one of awareness, and shaping personal response through the confidence generated by the various aspects of awareness. A major part of this confidence would generate from a woman's capability to defend herself in a situation of physical violence.

Having had a view of the different approaches to self-defence training in our country, and also a view of training of women in the armed forces, Swakshatra has developed a self-defence approach focused on women and their physical attributes. This training approach draws from both striking and grapping martial arts, with an intention to make this practicable and usable in situations of violence by women and children (individuals of smaller body frames). We have made an attempt to use the concept of leverage as much as possible.Our belief is that our approach to self-defence is scientific and close to nature.

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