Red Brigade Trust

Red Brigade Trust
Founded	2014
Founders	Ajay Patel, Usha Vishwakarma
Type	Non-governmental organization
Focus	Women's Rights, Safety and Empowerment
Location	Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India
Area served	India
Method	Awareness Campaigns, Protests, Nukkad Natak, Self Defense Training
Website	redbrigadetrust.org

Red Brigade Trust is a non-governmental organization^[1] located in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India. The organization was founded by Ajay Patel and Usha Vishwakarma and focuses on empowering women through self-defense education.^[2]

History

Ajay Patel had been working for woman empowerment with many non-governmental organizations (NGO). He found Usha Vishwakarma, who was an aspiring social worker at one of his friend's NGO. Usha was a survivor who survived an attempted sexual assault by a coworker at the age of eighteen. Usha's locality had more such survivors. Ajay formed a team of 15 girls including Usha and started conducting series of self-defense workshops for girls. Usha was the eldest and most active of all the girls and was made the face of the group.

In 2010, while conducting a workshop with teenaged girls, Ajay and his team discovered that most of the participants (53 out of 55) were sexually assaulted in their own houses by their own family members or close relatives. This workshop broke their belief that the girls are safe at home. Hence along with a group of 15 girls, most of them the victim of one or other form of sexual assault decided to fight back. Red Brigade Trust is formed by a group of Survivors of Sexual Violence under the leadership of Ajay Patel and Usha Vishwakarma. Red Brigade Trust is a group of Survivors. The group was officially registered as a trust in 2014 with Ajay Patel being the Managing Trustee and Usha being the Assistant Trustee/Secretary.

Initially, the group started an awareness campaign regarding women issues through street plays and workshops; dressed in red and black, red denoting struggle and black denoting protest. Subsequently, the Red Brigade members took martial arts (wu shu, karate) lessons at a local studio called the Dragon Academy Dojo in Lucknow; however, as word spread of the group, several international teachers began to travel to instruct the group. Later, they found that self-defense techniques are more reliable in protecting oneself from sexual assault; the Brigade learned self-defense and started training/equipping other girls with the self-defense techniques under the name Mission One Million.

Media Coverage

Domestic(India)

Domestically, the Red Brigade Trust has received extensive media coverage in India^[3] including numerous television appearances, radio interviews, and news coverage.

International

Internationally, the Red Brigade's story and mission has been translated into over twenty different language including articles in: Arabic,^[4] Bosnian,^[5] Chinese, Danish,^[6] English,^[7] French,^[8] German,^[9] Greek, Hindi,^[10] Indonesian,^[11] Italian,^[12] Japanese,^[13] Farsi,^[14] Portuguese, Romanian,^[15] Russian, Spanish,^[16] Swedish,^[17] Taiwan,^[18] Czech^[19] and Turkish.^[20]

Partnerships

Kuros!

In 2013, the Red Brigade partnered with Kuros! to become an official Kuros! partner in India. Kuros! is a conscious business based in Austin, Texas that partners with non-governmental organizations to provide pepper spray to women in developing countries around the world. Through their partnership with the Red Brigade, they provide and distribute pepper spray to women in Northern India who otherwise couldn't afford or have access to it for self-defense.^[21]

FRIDA The Young Feminist Fund

FRIDA is the grant partner for Red Brigade since 2014. FRIDA The Young Feminist Fund is a new initiative that funds and strengthens the participation and leadership of young feminist activists globally. The Fund is a collaborative effort between the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), The Fondo Centroamericano de Mujeres/Central American Women’s Fund (FCAM) and an experienced group of young feminist activists from different regions of the world.^[22]

References

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