Heroes start sheroes cafe for acid attack victims
Imagine a day in your office, your leave gets denied by your office. What do you do? Obviously you step back and think of it as a part of life. Imagine your demands are not fulfilled by your parents. What do you do? You gradually understand, maybe cry or nag a bit but in the end you realise. But when you a send a love proposal to a girl and she denies then where does this sense of realisation goes.
All of a sudden some sick mentality people become so aggressive in their narrow mind that they stoop down to such a level where they simply rip that girl of her life by throwing acid on her. Being heinous with the person just for the reason that she denied being a part of your life is simply a gruesome act revealing your nefarious intentions. Throwing acid means you are simply depriving a girl of her right to live or right to laugh. This is not Love this is insanity as its highest.
Even the family of the victims turn their faces away, make them realise that they are a burden, force them to stay in their house and most painful is they blame the girl for this act of a guy. But there are heroes who form Sheroes for acid attack victims. Alok Dixit and Ashish Shukla founder and co-founder of Sheroes Hangout cafe which provides job opportunities for acid attack victims have really stepped up to work for that segment of the society which are left behind even by their families. This has opened up an avenue for acid attack survivors to live again.
This cafe has made them laugh again. This initiative is taken under the Chhanv Foundation having 'Sheroes Hangout' in Agra, Lucknow and recently launched 2 'Kiosk' in Noida. While interacting with The Hans India, Co-founders Ashish Shukla, shared his working experiences with acid attack survivors and revel about how they're building the morale of survivors and society too. On the other hand - an acid attack survivor also quotes their struggle.
How you thought of hiring acid attack sufferers?
We never really thought of such a thing where we would be empowering acid attack survivors. We basically started a campaign called 'Stop Acid Attack' on 8th March 2013 to make acid attack a topic of mainstream media so more and more people could know about it and talk about it and feel the struggles of acid attack victims.During the campaign across the country we met with several acid attack victims and came to know about their struggles, social stigmas and challenges they face in their day to day life. Their was a lack of practical approach as just consoling them would do no good. On December 10, 2014 we opened a resident cafe in Agra with 5 girls with a motive to attach their life to mainstream media and give them the recognition they deserve. It all started with one cafe which has now spread its root to different parts such as Lucknow and Noida.
Any other parts of country you are targeting to expand business apart from just UP?
We never ever thought we would expand like in Noida or Lucknow but once we started our journey we started getting support from Akhilesh Yadav. Likewise in Delhi , nobody approached us and we also don't have the sufficient funds for setting up a cafe in Delhi as it incurs huge capital investment of around 50-100 Lacs.
As you closely see them working, please share your experience of working with sufferers?
Experience was pretty good. Somewhere it feels that they have not been provided the right opportunities to prosper in life. They are often treated as a burden in their homes. Their lives have been limited.
When the acid is splashed on a girl, they tend to lose their confidence. So what steps have you taken to boost their morale?
We counsel them and spend around 6-7 months in their morale building. We primarily focus on giving them a familiar environment where they can feel like themselves. When a girl comes to work in the cafe she sees other girls like her are living their lives to fullest then she also feels motivated. She also sparks a desire to live again, do normal things like going out, laughing, visiting the market etc.