A Celebration of Women™

is elated to Celebrate the Life of this young powerhouse, a woman leader that has taken one of our world’s deepest challenges for women, and decided to Take Action. RAPE is one of our history’s most confounding act of violence that our planet has seen, misunderstood and struggles to erase. This woman has taken into her heart a mission to STOP VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN through education. Yes, self defense is her passion, and now devotes her life to the training of young girls.

 

 
 
 

WOMAN of ACTION™

 
 

 
 

Usha Vishwakarma

 
 
 
 

Self Defense with Rural areas Girls…….CNN VIDEO HERE

Red Brigade is the group of the 14-18 year teen age girls. Who fight against sexual abuses with school going children. They have a group of street play too, who shows play on different issues. Red brigade running in Madiyav, Lucknow. Madiyav a remote area of south Lucknow, and it is situated at the border of village area.

HINDU TIMES says: “They first broke barriers at home and now, their popularity has transcended national boundaries.

Red Brigade, Lucknow’s young group of fighters, is a popular group worldwide.

The punishment? Humiliation, sometimes worse.

Their motivation is painfully clear. Every single girl in the so-called “Red Brigade” has been a victim of sexual assault — some have even been raped by their own family members, they say.

The group, comprising girls who have been victims of sexual abuse at home and on the streets, has more than a dozen articles, documentaries and radio programmes made on them in various parts of the globe.

There have been some live chat shows in which the girls were made to participate from India.

A self-defence trainer from London came to give free training to the Red Brigade and offered them jobs as trainers in her world-renowned self-defence institute.

Not just this, the group also has invitations from Australia, US, Germany, France, Switzerland and Italy for which passport and paper work is on.

Leader of the group Usha Vishwakarma, 25, says, “We had been working for our rights within our locality Madiaon for a couple of years. But when we moved on the streets after the Delhi gang rape, people began to look at us as fighters.”

Articles on the group were carried in newspapers and news channels in India highlighted the story of courage of 20 odd young girls who dared to fight for their rights after being abused by their near and dear ones.

The news channels, newspapers, journals, magazines and radio channels from other countries too approached the Red Brigade to cover their story and to highlight the condition of women in India through their stories.

Australian Brodcast Corporation ABC and German TV ARD made a documentary on Red Brigade. The others include The Guardian in UK, UAE’s daily newspaper ‘The National’ and BBC London.

“We had not realized that our lives would change like this. So many people from so many countries have come to us. They have stayed with us for days and made films/articles on our valour,” said Usha.

Notably, all the girls of the Red Brigade hail from very humble backgrounds. Majority includes daughters of daily wage labourers. Some even have the burden of their families on their own shoulders.

Usha says, “We asked them as to what was so unique about us that was drawing people from far off places to our slum? Many of them said that while India had always been known for its pathetic conditions, poverty and poor state of women,Red Brigade was seen as a group that dared to change the common notion. So they came to us.”

We organized a 9 days self defence workshop with rural girls to learn them self defence. As all report maximum rape and sexual violence in rural area with rural girls. In the series of self defence , we organized 9 days workshop on 30th August to 7th september in Bhadohi dist(Carpet Hub) of India. Bhadohi is 275 km from Lucknow. Over 60 girls participarted and learn self defence.

Redbrigade present many song for creativity and self defense for defense themself.

Now many local Organisation in various district want to learn self defense but we are suffering economical, so our mission is going slow…

Now our some girls Pooja, Neelam, Laxmi, Afreen khan and Preeti is preparing a good instructer them self. And now they are going without any trainer. And they are very confident.

Today Ms. Usha Vishwakarma and her Redbrigade is nominated as a WOMAN of ACTION™.

I believe they can become our beneficiaries/target for Celebration House™, Lucknow.

 
 

 
 
Brave Girl fighting Against Rape with us.

“DIYA” is just 13 year (SC) Shedule Caste poor girl and she was very claver girl, but, she raped by 28 year rapist VAKIL near home.

“DIYA” is living near Baksi ka Talab(BKT) in Lucknow, India. on 21 april her father told to bring a bucket of water from hand pump near home. When she was was returning named VAKIL raped her, she was injurd and told her parents, villager go to police station, but police dont register report. Then villager block the road and call to Redbrigade for help. Redbrigade with 150 girls and women, protest for them and decide to fight leagal advocacy in Court.Now rapist is in jail and no bail granted. But no any help from Government.

We (Redbrigade) support to her in education and self defense. now she is reading in class 3rd and improving herself, and we are learning them self defense technique. she want to be a good instructor of self defense. also she want to leave with us and want to fight her rape case.

The GUARDIAN reports: “The male tormentor of the young women of the Madiyav slum did not spot the danger until it was too late. One moment he was taunting them with sexual suggestions and provocations; the next they had hold of his arms and legs and had hoisted him into the air.

Then the beating began. Some of the young women lightly used their fists, others took off their shoes and hit him with those. When it was over, they let him limp away to nurse his wounds, certain that he had learned an important lesson: don’t push your luck with the Red Brigade.

Named for their bright red outfits, the Red Brigade was formed in November 2011 as a self-defence group for young women suffering sexual abuse in the northern Indian city of Lucknow, 300 miles south-east of Delhi. Galvanised by the gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old medical student in Delhi last December and the nationwide protests that followed against a rising tide of rapes, they are now gaining in confidence.

From a core membership of 15, ranging in age from 11 to 25, they now have more than 100 members, intelligent and sassy and with a simple message for the men who have made their lives a misery: they will no longer tolerate being groped, gawped at and worse. Their activities are a lesson in empowerment.

Men who fall foul of the Red Brigade can first expect a visit and a warning. Sometimes the Red Brigade will ask the police to get involved, but if all else fails they take matters into their own hands. Their leader, 25-year-old teacher Usha Vishwakarma, has her own experience of the daily danger faced by many young women in the country. She was just 18 when a fellow teacher tried to rape her. “He grabbed me and put his hands round me and tried to open my belt and trousers,” says Usha, sitting in the bare-brick front room of her small house. “But I was saved by my jeans because they were too tight for him to open, and that gave me a chance to fight, so I kicked him in the sensitive place and pushed him down and ran out of the door.”

No one at the school took her accusations seriously, telling her to forget it and stop causing trouble. The experience left her traumatised and for two years she did nothing. But little by little her confidence came back. In 2009 she set up her own small school for local girls in an outbuilding next to her family home. Yet all around her, she says, she saw more and more young women suffering the same abuse she had faced. And it was threatening to wreck the chances of her young female students.

“Parents were telling girls to stay in their homes so there would be no incidents. They said, ‘if you go to school, boys will be troubling you, so stay home and there will be no sexual violence’,” says Vishwakarma. “But we said no, and we decided to form a group to fight for ourselves. We decided we would not just complain; we would take a lead and fight for ourselves.” They bought red kameez (shirts) and black salwar (trousers) and began to plan the fightback. “We chose red because it means danger and black for protest,” says Vishwakarma.

There is much to fight back against. “It is in the minds of men that girls are objects and it has been like that always,” says Vishwakarma. “Religion shows women as very powerless and that whoever is strong can do anything.”

Other members of the group drift in and join her, sitting on the bed along one wall of the front room. At the other end of the room is a table laden with the placards they carry with them when they go out to protest on the 29th day of every month. The demonstrations mark the date of the Delhi bus rape and murder on 29 December.

Their slogans read: “Stop rape now” and “We want safety”.

“In the electronic era there are pictures everywhere of women and girls being treated like objects. It is now very simple to see pornography and it is feeding the hunger for sex. The men think that if you are looking sexy, then you want sex,” says Vishwakarma.

They have started martial arts training so that the men do not have a physical advantage over them. Pooja, Vishwakarma’s 18-year-old sister, laughs as she recalls the reaction of the boy they grabbed in the street when his taunts became too much. “We all stopped and turned round and we surrounded him and grabbed his arms and legs and he thought it was a joke, but we were not kidding and four of us lifted him in the air and the others started to hit him with their shoes and fists,” she says.

The rough justice the Red Brigade metes out might seem extreme to western sensibilities, but many Indian women are making it clear that they are no longer prepared to put up with endemic abuse. That much is clear from the crime figures: reports of molestation in Delhi are up 590% year on year and rape reports by 147%. The rape cases have hit tourist numbers, which were down 25% in the first three months of the year – 35% fewer women are travelling to India.

The Red Brigade say sexual abuse is a part of daily life for young women like them. They all have stories of abuse, attempted rapes and daily harassment. “This is what happens in India,” says 16-year-old Laxmi, one of Vishwakarma’s lieutenants. “These things happen all the time. All of us know this, so don’t let anyone say otherwise. This is why we have formed the Red Brigade.”

Seventeen-year-old Preeti Verma nods in agreement. Her family are too poor to have a toilet in the house, so she has to go out into the fields, she says. Every time she went out, the man in the neighbouring house threw stones at her to try to scare her into jumping up. “He wanted to see my body,” she says. “I told him: ‘What are you doing? You are shameless, don’t you have a mother and sister in your house?’ But he replied that his mother is for his father, his sister is for her husband and that I was for him.” She told Vishwakarma, and the man received a visit from the Red Brigade and another from the police. She has had no trouble from him since.

“We’ve caught a lot of men recently,” says 17-year-old Sufia Hashmi. “I joined up because men always used to pass comments on me and touch my body, but now we beat them the men cannot do anything and they run away. You feel powerful and you feel good.“

The next day, they gather on the roof of a gym across the city to run through their moves, a mixture of kicks, punches and throws. An instructor shows Pooja how to use a wooden stick to keep a boy at bay. She holds it against his assistant’s throat and the boy looks terrified. The others gasp and giggle.

Yet it is not just the young men of the neighborhood that the Red Brigade must overcome. Many of the members are very young and, although some of their parents are supportive, others are convinced they are wasting their lives. “The attitude of my parents is very demoralizing,” says 16-year-old Simpi Diwari, a tiny young woman who a few moments ago was kicking away the legs of one of her colleagues.

“I want to be like Usha, fighting against the cruel things, I want to be a teacher and a motivator too, but I am fighting with my parents just to be allowed out of the house.”

On the way back to the slum, the rickshaws pass a public park and for a moment these tough young women show themselves for what they really are – children forced to grow up fast. They beg and plead to stop. “Please, please,” they say, their eyes gleaming in excitement.

Shrieking gleefully, they race off towards the swings, slides and roundabouts. Later they stroll back through the market, eating ice-creams, heading for their homes. The sun is low in the sky, the shadows long. The men watch sullenly as they pass, like wolves who have just discovered the sheep are armed. No one risks a word.

Self Defence with Rural areas Girls…….

We organized a 9 days self defence workshop with rural girls to learn them self defence. As all report maximum rape and sexual violence in rural area with rural girls. In the series of self defence , we organized 9 days workshop on 30th August to 7th september in Bhadohi dist(Carpet Hub) of India. Bhadohi is 275 km from Lucknow.

Over 60 girls participarted and learn self defence. Redbrigade present many song for creativity and self defence for defence themself. Now many local Organisation in various district want to learn self defence but we are suffering economical, so our mission is going slow…

Now our some girls Pooja, Neelam, Laxmi, Afreen khan and Preeti is preparing a good instructer them self. And now they are going without any trainer. And they are very confident.

Contact Red Brigade:

RED BRIGADE/ BALMANCH
Near Ramlila Ground, Naubasta Khurd
Madiyav, Dist. Lucknow,U.P. (India)
Tel +91 9621116309 (Usha Vishwakarma)
Email: Mail to Usha
Visit us on Facebook
Donate via Paypal to: [email protected]

Read about them

http://theglobalpanorama.com/the-red-brigade-of-lucknow/
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/08/13/world/asia/india-red-brigade/index.html
 
 
 
 
 

A Celebration of Women™

welcomes this young woman into our global Alumni with open arms, as a one of the truest form of a future woman leader….celebrating that at the tender age of 25, she has inspired many teen girls to unite and Take Action against the violence of SEXUAL ASSAULT and more …and look forward to future collaborations for the betterment of the lives for all women/girls.

 

 

Brava Usha!