Sonal Kapoor, the founder of Protsahan, builds futures through powerful, inclusive, and compassionate methods of inclusion. Here is an interview with Sonal.
Could you start by
telling us a bit about yourself - your growing years, work, education - to the
extent that is both comfortable and informs what you do today?
I've always been a
student who liked doodling and reading poetry more than Math & Chemistry at
school, though I ended up doing Science and later Microbiology (H) in
graduation. I was interested in vaccines and public health for long. I did my
MBA from Symbiosis and subsequently ISB and was just about to venture into
advertising and communications for the biotechnology industry when a chance
encounter with a woman, led to the beginning of Protsahan. Now after a
decade of work here, I don't think anything defines me more, than my work with
children through Protsahan.
How did Protsahan come
about?
While on a film shoot
in 2010, I happened to meet a young woman who had six daughters and was
pregnant with her 7th child. On being asked about her circumstances, the woman
narrated in a matter-of-fact way that she was ready to strangle her newborn if
it happened to be a girl again. She also spoke of sending her 8-year-old
daughter to work at a brothel so that she could feed the rest of her family. It
shocked me a great deal, that within the hour, the idea of starting a unique
creative school had started taking shape. Within 3 weeks, after a small
feasibility study in the area, Protsahan started as a one room creative arts
and design school in one of the darkest slums of the country, in the heart of
the capital city New Delhi.
After about four
months, I quit my corporate job and ventured into an altogether different world
where my creative streak was no longer used to make money for corporations, but
was used to gradually revolutionise the education delivery mechanism for
children at the bottom of the social pyramid. I was finally able to use all the
creativity that I previously used in the advertising and communications
industry for something more profoundly important. I went door to door in the
urban slums of Uttam Nagar in West Delhi, the same place where I had met the
mother who was sending her 8-year-old to a brothel, and asked parents to send
their daughters to Protsahan. I started experimenting with the innovative
approaches of Design, Art, Digital Stories, Photography, Technology & Cinema
(the 5 pillars of creativity model) to give young adolescent girls the power to
break the extreme cycle of poverty and fight abuse through creativity.
Filmmaking, Photography and Madhubani artwork grew in popularity in areas which
were rubbished as ‘dark spaces’ by most. Today, expressive arts therapy is the
crux of our developmental work with adolescent girls from difficult
backgrounds.
Since then, Protsahan
has rescued and successfully mainstreamed 800 girls into formal
schools, rescued 68 girls from forced early marriage, educated more than
19,800 girls on child rights, prevention of sexual abuse and menstrual
hygiene, and created powerful media on social issues like child marriage,
access to toilets, and gender violence. Our various projects and programs have
reached out to more than 11,000 young girls and boys in a ‘hub and spokes’
model.
We also launched an
interactive illustrated book on Child Abuse that is written and designed to
explain the CSA laws in four countries (UK, India, USA, South Africa) to
educators, parents and children in its simplest form to raise awareness to
fight against child sexual abuse. Having led path-breaking work through
Protsahan through empathy and creativity-based programmes, I now wish to solve
the issues in Education & Child Protection sector at scale, to create a
sustainable dent in this space in my lifetime. I believe transforming India’s
teachers will transform our children, in most sustainable manner.
At the time you
began, without resources that were accessible and within reach, it must have
been a huge task to take on. How did you go about working on your goals?
In the beginning I had
no B-Plans nor any Plan-B's, there was never a day that made me feel, if
Protsahan doesn't work then what. I simply went about doing my work. Did small
dipstick surveys, found out why the girls were not sent to schools, made home
visits, etc. It was only after 4-5 years, did I truly understand how Protsahan
was helping the children deal with trauma of abuse, that I decided to structure
and codify the processes of running the organization further, because we had to
make the working sustainable in the most simplest sense. Initially the funds
were very limited, so each of us, muti-tasked all the time. Then, in 2013 we
won a grant from UN Women at Project Inspire, from among the 590 organizations
globally that applied, Protsahan's work was acknowledged. That gave us
more self-belief to keep moving on. Challenges are still aplenty, but now the
vision is clearer. The grassroot team that we built over a period of time, are
the real heroes at Protsahan, not me.
You may have also
been met with resistance, trolling, and even hate. How have you dealt with any
and all pushback you've faced?
Appreciation and
insults are all the same beyond a point. Either way, nothing deters me
from doing what I've set my heart on. I think, if I can do justice to my ideas
of fighting for freedom, equality and dignity for children, then I have lived
well. Constructive feedback and dissent is always welcome, but wasting time and
resources on people's opinions and judgements is not something I bother myself
with. To be honest, there is no time for that. Our focus is on strengthening
and empowering the agency of an adolescent girl who faces
intergenerational poverty and abuse, and we try and find solutions to that
effect, with a lens of intersectionality to create most impact.
On the positive
side, could you share memorable anecdotes / moments in your journey so far?
I’m going to share
them as narratives through tweets here:
This little girl of mine, is 10. Everytime she sits in a Lego session she constructs a home, piece by piece. She comes from a broken family. She tells me she wants to be an architect when she grows up. Creative Arts Therapies, with counseling, heal PTSD in children. pic.twitter.com/vGZccut49J— Sonal Kapoor (@ArtForCause) April 27, 2019
Last week at Alliance Francaise, #Delhi where @NGOProtsahan girls performed live and expressed anger and frustration on how women are violated in the world. They used the expressions from Japanese theatre & Kerala martial arts, #Kalaripayattu. Mesmerising moments for us a team. pic.twitter.com/MZ5YeMsrQO— Protsahan (@NGOProtsahan) May 20, 2019
People in her community called her 'pagal' until 2yrs bk. Now she is light. She writes poetry, does colorful folk art. Now in 11th in patrachar vidalaya. Another drop in the ocean through that were so proud of. Yes scale is important but #empathy is priority. pic.twitter.com/v7I0d01JHX— Protsahan (@NGOProtsahan) May 1, 2019
It was a session where girls talked abt their biggest failures (according to them) & created a vision board for future. A little 9-year-old, whose mother is mentally challenged, made this as a version of her mother in which she sees herself. (1/2) pic.twitter.com/M3fRMa2cPH— Sonal Kapoor (@ArtForCause) April 22, 2019
P is 12. That day she came to Protsahan with a deep fresh scar on her right cheek. We enquired. This little child assured us with unshaken confidence that she had hurt herself while taking out a utensil from a top shelf, at home. (1/n) pic.twitter.com/v1YU4htxCL— Sonal Kapoor (@ArtForCause) April 23, 2019
Today at @NGOProtsahan a 15-year-old girl weaved a #dreamcatcher through a guided psycho-socioemotional process work, & talked about her #childhood. 'Not all days will be easy,' she said, 'Some days are hardest, bad dreams, zero confidence and then.. you discover yourself anew.' pic.twitter.com/DpvUzL5A39— Sonal Kapoor (@ArtForCause) April 17, 2019
She made this with clay in an art based therapy session. A simple intention focussed representation of her dreams. Since last 9 years she has had the same dream, that of becoming a #dance teacher. (1/2) #ArtHeals pic.twitter.com/o0ZFlFqOgI— Protsahan (@NGOProtsahan) April 3, 2019
Can you tell us a
bit about the HEAL concept?
Protsahan has a unique
way of designing, implementing, and advocating our interventions. The goal is
not to just talk about abuse. We want our impact to be far more significant
than traditional methods of action and advocacy. For this very reason, we
devised a common thread that runs across every step we take, ever campaign we
run, and every child we reach out to, a thread that enables us to get that
lasting impact. We call it the HEART Principle. We use this model as a tool to
help bring children out of their shells, and into a healthy learning
environment. It combines the study and use of five pillars of Healing,
Education, Art, Recovery, and Technology. Together, these five pillars ignite
the spark of interest in young children rescued from vulnerable and abusive circumstances.
The children we reach out to have usually never attended a formal school. By
using innovative and hands on approaches to teaching them social and
educational skills, the children start learning and adapting subconsciously,
all while having fun. These techniques are used to initiate the children in a
ten-month-long bridge course. Once basic training is completed, the young child
is enrolled in a government school and is usually able to join the 5th or the
6th grade directly. While attending the government school the child can choose
to continue to attend Protsahan, which is right inside her slum area, and can
continue to learn creative arts in a supportive environment. These skills
include Madhubani and Warli art, working with iPad and laptops, Bharatnatyam
traditional dance, film making, DSLR Photography, theatre, along with a better
understanding of gender rights and menstrual hygiene through digital
storytelling. In a Protsahan classroom, these five essentials are at the heart
of everything we undertake. We're now evolving from HEART to HEAL principle,
where L is 'Life Skills'
You're all set to
build a computer lab for 100 young adolescent girls. Can you tell us about your
initiative? How can a reader help?
We are raising funds
to build a smart "Digi-Lab", equipped with cameras, tabs and
computers that will help the girls living in the slums of Uttam Nagar (East) in
New Delhi get access to technology for education and information. For far too
long, Protsahan has managed with 4 laptops for 100+ girls at our center. With
the success of this campaign, we wish to empower the agency of not only our
girls, but every girl from the community to get easy and much needed access to
technology, right when it matters, viz. their adolescence. Access to
technology empowers a girl to educate herself better, participate in local
governance better, interact with her peers better, and most importantly equips
her with a future that is not only strong and independent, but also at par with
the current modern techno-savvy world. They'll learn photography, graphic
designing, program coding, designing websites for local enterprises they're now
beginning to set up and beyond which will enable them to become more job ready
and thus break past the intergenerational cycle of abuse and poverty,
forever. We urge your readers to kindly donate and share the link of the
fundraiser campaign on social media. You can also directly, in-kind send us
laptops, DSLRs and tabs in good working condition. We're at 8377852991.
Link to the
Campaign: https://www.ketto.org/fundraiser/help-build-a-slum-digi-lab-for-100-girls?utm_source=campaigner&utm_medium=twShare&utm_campaign=help-build-a-slum-digi-lab-for-100-girls