iVolunteer Blog - everything about volunteeringThe more I read criminal law, the more I realise how fragile balance is. On one side, there are survivors of sexual violence who already face stigma, disbelief, and social pressure. On the other side, there is a foundational principle of criminal law: the accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Sometimes these two ideas […]
When I first began my journey as a Swar Fellow, I carried a mix of excitement and uncertainty. I came with my training, my notebook, my frameworks, and the belief that I was ready to understand the community. But community work, I realised, does not begin with knowledge. It begins with surrender with letting go […]
One of the most powerful parts of my Swar Fellowship has been learning how differently women experience life, opportunity, and oppression. In the beginning, I used to think “women’s issues” were similar everywhere mobility, safety, income, workload. But as my fieldwork deepened, I realised something more complex: every woman’s struggle is shaped by the multiple […]
When I look back at the last few months of my Swar Fellowship, I realise that the most powerful part of this journey hasn’t been the activities or the reports, it has been the quiet, slow, human process of building trust. As fellows, we enter communities with a project plan, a purpose, and a list […]
During my fieldwork as a Swar Fellow, there were many moments when the theories I had read suddenly came alive in front of me. But nothing struck me as strongly as the idea Simone de Beauvoir wrote in The Second Sex: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” I had studied this earlier, […]
iVolunteer Blog - everything about volunteering 