{"id":5735,"date":"2015-01-16T14:57:00","date_gmt":"2015-01-16T14:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/2015\/01\/giraffe-heroes-india-usha-narayane\/"},"modified":"2018-06-13T18:05:12","modified_gmt":"2018-06-13T12:35:12","slug":"giraffe-heroes-india-usha-narayane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/giraffe-heroes-india-usha-narayane\/","title":{"rendered":"Giraffe Heroes India – Usha Narayane"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nUnder the guidance of Sh. Vijay Saluja, Giraffe Heroes India\u2019s new Director<\/b>, Giraffe Heroes India (GH\/India) aims to bring Giraffe vision, strategies and tools for change to the 1.3 billion people on the Indian subcontinent \u2013 making it potentially by far the largest Giraffe global affiliate launched to date.<\/div>\n
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\nGH\/India will tell the inspiring stories of the country\u2019s heroes, motivating others to become heroic too. GH\/India will also offer practical tools citizen activists need to succeed, as well as Giraffe civic engagement programs in schools, helping young people build lives as courageous and compassionate citizens serving a vibrant India.<\/div>\n
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\nDwarka Parichay being media partner for the Giraffe Heroes India program, starting a series of inspiring stories of heroes in India.<\/b> This will definitely motivate others and more Giraffe Heroes will join the GH\/India brigade.<\/div>\n
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\nCheck for criteria & nomination form for a Giraffe Hero India.<\/b><\/div>\n
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Narayane, Usha<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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Usha Narayane<\/b><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

\nSometimes when an entire community is being brutalized, it takes just one brave person to turn the situation around. For 15 years the mud alleys of the main slum in the central Indian city of Nagpur were ruled by a thug named Akku Yadav and his band of killers, rapists, and extortionists. The slum residents are of the Dalit caste\u2014untouchables\u2014and their complaints were never taken seriously by the local police. The criminals were from a higher social rung than their victims and besides, they had the money to pay baksheesh–bribes.<\/p>\n

One woman of the slum said that when she went to the police to complain that she was gang-raped by Akku Yadav and his goons, she was then gang-raped by the police. There’s a long list of such accounts, each more horrifying than the one that precedes it.<\/p>\n

Into this chaos stepped Usha Narayane, a 25-year-old Dalit woman who had grown up in the slum and who had\u2014against all odds\u2014gone away to school, studying hotel management. Narayane, about to embark on a professional career, was visiting home on a school holiday when the family living next door to her own was attacked by Yadav’s thugs. The gang warned Narayane not to go to the police\u2014but that\u2019s exactly what she did.<\/p>\n

Yadav returned with 40 men. They surrounded the Narayanes\u2019 shack, and Yadav brandished a bottle of acid, saying he would mutilate the young woman\u2019s face before he raped and killed her. She barricaded the door and turned on the gas, threatening to blow everyone up if the gang broke into the house.<\/p>\n

The thugs backed off, and other slum residents, watching this drama from the street, took heart at seeing that one woman\u2019s stand had defeated the gang. That day community members actually burned down Yadov\u2019s house, and he turned himself over to the police–for protection.<\/p>\n

When the thug who had terrorized them for so many years appeared outside the courthouse, there were over 200 women waiting, and they cut him down in the street, using their shoes, their kitchen knives, and handfuls of cayenne. His police escort fled.<\/p>\n

Although she wasn\u2019t even present at that lynching, Usha Narayane was one of the women the police arrested for it afterward. The case has never come to trial, but Narayane\u2019s life is forever altered. She is still under police surveillance, unable to leave Nagpur, and she\u2019ll never be able to pursue the career she planned in hotel management. She has, however, found a new calling: she\u2019s now a community organizer.<\/p>\n

Narayane founded and directs the Kasturba Nagar Community Project. With support from the M. Night Shyamalan Foundation, this project is giving both entrepreneurial and skill-specific job training to 250 women from the neighborhood. They\u2019re learning computer work, clothing design and manufacture, catering, baking, and food processing.<\/p>\n

Providing first an impetus to protect themselves and their children, and then training for good jobs, Usha Narayane is a champion for people who had no one before she stepped forward, taking a giant step for her fellow “untouchables.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Under the guidance of Sh. Vijay Saluja, Giraffe Heroes India\u2019s new Director, Giraffe Heroes India (GH\/India) aims to bring Giraffe vision, strategies and tools for change to the 1.3 billion people on the Indian subcontinent \u2013 making it potentially by far the largest Giraffe global affiliate launched to date. GH\/India will tell the inspiring stories of the country\u2019s heroes, motivating others to become heroic too. GH\/India will also offer practical tools citizen activists need to succeed, as well as Giraffe civic engagement programs in schools, helping young people build lives as courageous and compassionate citizens serving a vibrant India. Dwarka Parichay being media <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29928,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1882,1879,16],"class_list":["post-5735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-update","tag-giraffe-heroes","tag-update","tag-vijay-k-saluja","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5735"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5735\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51320,"href":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5735\/revisions\/51320"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}