February 2026                                             WORKSHOP 27

It was wholesome welcoming newcomers to our collective. 

Over 4 years, we have developed a sisterhood, a community of women. We had organically grown the collective, adding 1-2 members at a time.

This time, however, we had invited a large number of 20 newcomers- some friends of our collective women, who proudly came and dropped them off, some from community based organizations who had attended the Kala Mela, and were impressed enough with our work, to join us on this journey.

Along with them, we had our sakhis, who for various reasons were unable to be a part of our Rasta group, and we had 4 senior members from our previous batch- to cofacilitate.

We started with getting to know each other, some fun, dance and laughter and theatre exercises led by Neethu and some of our senior women.

Later we had an induction and talk by our senior women- who spoke hearteningly about their experience in Haan Hum and the impact it has created in their lives.

We ended the first day with some free-hand drawing of Happiness and fun.

A lot of women, including a verbally challenged women formed our cohort this time, and they were excellent in their first artworks!

Day 2 was all about Theatre.

We started with theatre exercises, and we worked on image theatre.

When it was time to give them time to create their own small skits- the participants bowled us over by creating skits on- Animals inside a Mela, A wedding skit, a domestic violence skit and educstion of sex worker's chidren skit.

We were so inspired by the entire set of women, and everyone parted committing towards building a stronger community together!