Jeevika has always focused on building women leadership from the intervention communities. Substantial effort has been given on capacity and knowledge building among the women of the communities for them to understand gender, women’s rights, the legal and other procedural aspects of addressing the above vulnerabilities. Over a period of working with the women in the communities, a positive vibe has been created that led to formation of Alor Disha and subsequently Alor Barta, the two women collectives. Alor Disha formed during 2002, is a spontaneous response from the communities where women decided to form this collective. The name of the collective as also decided by the collective members themselves. Initially, Alor Disha focused its intervention only with women, victims of multiple forms of vulnerabilities. This was an outcome from continuous knowledge & capacity building for the women and also the real-life experience of violence which compelled them to form the collective and fight for their entitlements.

Jeevika has always focused on building women leadership from the intervention communities. Substantial effort has been given on capacity and knowledge building among the women of the communities for them to understand gender, women’s rights, the legal and other procedural aspects of addressing the above vulnerabilities. Over a period of working with the women in the communities, a positive vibe has been created that led to formation of Alor Disha and subsequently Alor Barta, the two women collectives. Alor Disha formed during 2002, is a spontaneous response from the communities where women decided to form this collective. The name of the collective as also decided by the collective members themselves. Initially, Alor Disha focused its intervention only with women, victims of multiple forms of vulnerabilities. This was an outcome from continuous knowledge & capacity building for the women and also the real-life experience of violence which compelled them to form the collective and fight for their entitlements.

But it was felt and realised that root cause of violence remained with child marriage and that too can be addressed through a preventive model and working with adolescent girls & women. Alor Barta thus emerged as a prevention collective working primarily with adolescent girls and women. Alor Barta, formed during 2010, came into being as part of the micro-finance programme where rights of women was one of the core issues being addressed apart from providing them with loan. The participating women did not have clarity on their rights and entitlements, which further put impetus to strengthen the intervention and formation of this collective focusing on livelihood promotion. This collective has primarily focused on prevention of vulnerabilities among women and girls in the communities.
Thus, Alor Disha and Alor Barta became the two driving forces in accelerating the ground level intervention through sensitization and facilitation for access to justice for women and young adults. Jeevika has put forth its effort on capacitating these collectives for their knowledge enhancement and also guiding them on legal procedure including linkage with respective stakeholders. On the other hand, Jeevika has also worked closely with administrative and legal system for strengthening service delivery mechanism and smooth access to social protection schemes.

36 women community leaders have been identified for taking forward the agenda independently by themselves across the communities and make it a sustainable model of community-based mechanism to address violence against women, social problems, child marriage and equal access to resources. This group has been formed during 2021 and titled as ‘Anti Violence Action Group’.