17 March 2023:Initiation of a Grassroots Leadership Academy, spearheaded by CORO India, H4H in India

Initiation of a Grassroots Leadership Academy, spearheaded by CORO India, Home for

Humanity in India

CORO team meeting holding Homes for Humanity and Humanity Charter signs.

It was two years ago today, on the International Day of Conscience, 5 April 2021, that we officially launched CORO and the Savitri Mahila Mandal: Women’s Federation as an

exemplary Home for Humanity in Mumbai, with a panoply of inspiring women grassroots community leaders sharing their stories and visions with us from across Mumbai’s diverse urban settlements.

Middle Rahul Mumtaz Kabir and Muskaan holding certificate

We take great pride today in celebrating the leadership role CORO played throughout the COVID crisis in sustaining life and community through its longstanding web of relationships across Mumbai’s urban settlements (slums), and in expanding its unique model of grassroots leadership across the vast states of Maharashtra and Rajasthan. We also champion the electoral success of several CORO community members in local elections.

Right to Pee Team with Anjum in front, (and us)

Today, we salute CORO as it enters a new phase in its 30-year history, with an inspiring

vision of growth and expansion across the region, and especially as it fulfils its long held dream of establishing a GRASSROOTS LEADERSHIP ACADEMY.

This Academy will make a paradigm-shifting contribution to Indian and global academia by putting the lived experience and expertise of grassroots community leaders in the driver’s seat, and will be a great enrichment to the burgeoning Earth Campus for transformative education of Homes for Humanity spread across all continents.

On 17 March we engaged in a rich discussion with the core leadership team of CORO on the Grassroots Leadership Academy and CORO’s scaling-up plan (1st pic).

We also celebrated the family of Mumtaz Shaikh and Rahul Gaware, and their children

Muskaan and Kabir (2nd pic), (for having successfully moved out of the urban settlement into their own home through the collective solidarity of all their friends in the community) for being a unique model of social cohesion and conscience in action. We were finally able to hand over to the family in person the Home for Humanity Achievement and Expansion Award which they had received in February 2022.

Finally, we congratulate the Right to Pee Campaign Team (3rd pic) for their creativity and persistence in overcoming all hurdles and mobilising women in the community to demand their right to sanitation.

We particularly congratulate Anjum Shaikh (foreground of the third pic), who has truly emerged as an unstoppably powerful and inspiring leader, since she joined CORO in 2015 as a victim of domestic violence. Anjum received the Woman Luminary Award in India for her leadership of the Right to Pee Campaign.