Women Development Cell

Session on ‘Stand Up Against Street Harassment’: The ActionAid Foundation (India) were invited by the WDC of Mithibai College to address the topic of ‘Street Violence’ on 27 July, 2022. Two resource experts, in association with L’oreal, conducted a training session explaining the prevalence, forms, and ways to deal with street violence. Using pictures and videos, the students of SYBA were informed about the realities of street violence. Many students also shared their experiences and raised queries on how one can cope with street violence. Approximately 100 second year students participated and gained from this session.

Freedom for Girls session: An event to raise awareness about women’s health was organised on 23rd August, 2022 by the Women Development Cell in association with Rotary Club of Bombay Juhu Beach at 11am in Juhu Jagruti Hall, Mithibai College. The event started with a brief introduction on speakers and their achievements and contribution to society till date. The speakers were felicitated by Dr. Khevana Desai. Three speakers from different background addressed the crowd assembled in the hall. The first speaker Dr. Suman Bijlani talked about menstrual hygiene, she started with the explanation of the working of menstruation, what is menstruation, and she explained the working of a menstrual cup along with the procedure to use a menstrual cup. She also helped students access menstrual cups at a discounted rate. The second speaker Dr. Gulrez Tyebkhan started by talking about different skin types and its various adversities, then she went on to explain how skin can relate to various severe common skin related issues, like acne, along with hypoandrogenism. She also explained the correlation of skin and PCOS. The third speaker Dr Mona Shah talked about life enrichment, she covered the topic of and how one needs to exercise physically and mentally, she also talked about an Indian approach to wellbeing – Swasthya, involving healthy food habits and sleeping patterns.

WDC Mithibai signed an MOU with Akshara a women’s resource centre for activities to be conducted during 2022-23. Various activities were conducted as given under.
On 25th August 2022, an online orientation event ‘You Me Aur Hum’ was conducted by Akshara. This meeting was held online on the platform, Zoom and was conducted in order to welcome all the peer guides, volunteers and teachers in-charge of the colleges involved in the Youth For Change Program. The session was largely about clearing the members’ doubts regarding the program and introducing the nature of activities that they would be taking part in over the course of a year.

A Citizen’s rights workshop was conducted in collaboration with NGO Akshara workshop on 25th November 2022, to make students aware of the Citizen’s Rights as per the Constitution of India in a fun and interactive session. 147 Students of 8 colleges actively participated in it. The session started with a puzzle given to groups of students provided with an incomplete story and the task of completing it with their own thought process. Other groups and faculty would raise questions on it and thus a cascade of interpretations flowed making the interactions interesting. Students learned about various rights through storytelling coming up with unique solutions. They also discussed real-life happenings and put forth their respective thoughts on the same.

Enlightening and essential interactive sessions were organised in collaboration with the organization, Stand We Speak, funded by the NITI Aayog on ‘Sexual Rights & Sexual health’ during 9th – 16th December, 2022, for all second-year degree, third-year degree and second-year postgraduation learners. The resource experts, Ms. Priyal Agarwal, Psychologist and Dr. Keshav, Physician provided scientific and technical information about safe sex practices, different methods of contraception, consequences of unhealthy practices (details of the sexually-transmitted diseases) and most importantly, about their sexual rights. They discussed concepts of consent and boundaries, with case studies, practice exercises, and clarifying myths and also shared their interactive website, which is in-built with an anonymous expert for the users to interact on an anonymous basis.

A series of lectures were organised for the First-Year students (BA/BCOM/BSc /SFCs) of Mithibai Degree College on 23rd and 27th of February 2023, in classroom no.610. Speakers were- Dr. Kamran Qureshi and Dr. Dipika Bishnoi, from Community Medicine Department of Dr. RN Cooper Hospital, Vile Parle-West. Dr. Kamran Qureshi and Dr.Dipika threw light upon the topics like ‘Building Healthy Relationships, Online Dating, sexually transmitted diseases, precautionary measures and solutions to tackle online crimes related to it’. The speakers spoke on the ‘do and don’ts’ of Online Dating with relevant statistical evidence based on genuine surveys conducted across India, STDs awareness with precautionary measures and alerted upon online crimes sourced from online dating. It was an eye-opening session for students who have been exploring and will explore the opportunities of virtual relationships while assessing its risks in past, present and future.

A Gender Audit of the college was carried out by the student volunteers of the WDC in the month of February, 2023. They were trained by Akshara Foundation in the procedures and requirements of the audit.

International Women’s Day: We celebrated International Women’s Day by felicitating the female housekeeping and support staff on 8 March, 2023 at 9am in the ground floor staffroom. They were invited for a cake cutting celebration and were gifted mobile sling purses. The gift was in line with the theme of this year’s Women’s Day declared by the United Nations, i.e., ‘DigitALL: Innovations & Technology for Gender Equality’. They were encouraged to expand their use of mobile phones by making online payments, using bank transactions, ticket booking, and other online transactions, along with their regular phone usage. The aim was to empower them and contribute towards their financial independence and self-reliance.

Women Development Cell with ICC of college organised first session of Gender based violence awareness workshop on 25th August 2021 at 11.30am for Arts students of Mithibai College on virtual Platform of MS TEAM. The workshop was done with the help of Plan India, which is a non-Profit organisation striving to advance Children rights & equity for girls. Since 1979, Plan India & its partners have improved the lives of millions of children by protecting & giving them education, livelihood opportunities. The guest speaker Ms. Priyanka Singh, highlighted child rights provided by UN and various constitutional provisions in India under various Acts and procedures to be followed as per Indian law.

Another session on ‘Gender based violence awareness workshop’ was organised by WDC of Mithibai College on 28th August 2021 at 11.30 A.M. on MS Teams (Online mode). Ms.Priyanka Sinha addressed the students and adhered to all their queries on child rights.

MOU with Akshara was signed by the college on 6th October 2021 for organising training sessions for students on gender equality.

The 112th International Women’s Day was celebrated by IC-WDC of Mithibai College with an Awareness session on ‘Are you digitally safe? Threats & Prevention of cybercrime’ on 8th March 2022 in the conference room of Mithibai College (Autonomous) from 10 AM onwards. The theme for the day was ‘Break the Bias-Imagine a Gender Equal World.’ The session included talks by Ms. Ridhima Sharma and Ms. Shilpa Chandolikar. Ms. Riddhima. An alumnus of Mithibai college, Ph.D. Scholar from US and founder of Fem positive, addressed the psycho- social – political and economic crisis in the online space. She specifically highlighted the requirement of a safe space for women and how one can ensure that. Ms.Shilpa Chandolikar, member of ‘responsible netizen’ and an activist of ‘Cyber sakhi’ gave a realistic understanding of what is happening on the online space; the thought process, causes and the consequences of cybercrime. The talks were followed by fun activities for the teaching and non-teaching staff. Teachers as well as the non-teaching staff participated enthusiastically in the games and the fun activities organized by the Women’s Development Cell.

The students of Mithibai college mentored by committee members of WDC to participated in ‘Gender Lens Competition’ under the Youth for Change Program organized by Akshara Centre. In this national level competition, with participants from institutes and colleges all over India, one of our entries by Overall Leader Shyama Kotecha won 1st Runner Podium in Category of Song.

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