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A Moving, Singing Revolution: The Bauls Of Bengal

Kandhamal's Mothers Live With The Memories of Violence

From Asian Teens, With Love: Healthy Meals

Give Her A Good Story, She'll Make A Great Film

In Pakistan's Hour Of Need, GenNext Responds

Maximum City, Minimum Opportunities: How Mumbai's Unorganised Women Workers Cope

Rasoolpur's Gang of Girls Take Charge

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Canada
From Asian Teens, With Love: Healthy Meals
Naunidhi Kaur

The meeting room at the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) in Mississauga, Ontario, was abuzz with activity. A group of 10 women was waiting for the Meals with Love youth to make their presentation on healthy eating and hand out hampers of locally-grown produce. For the women congregating at the YMCA hall, fresh food was a luxury - the reason why their caseworker had chosen them for this unique gesture. Inspired by a youth leadership programme, six high-school students of Asian origin have initiated the Meals with Love project. In its second year now, the project reaches out to single mothers, marginalised seniors and abused women with care packs of nutritious food and tips on healthy eating.

"This year our target was to distribute 50 hampers. We gave out the packs to families of single parents, seniors and people suffering from chronic diseases like diabetes. We wanted to share the food and the message of healthy eating."

[Photographs Available]

Global
Give Her A Good Story, She'll Make A Great Film
Kinjal Dagli

Kolkata-born Lalita Krishna, who now lives in Canada, has won the Trailblazer award at the 2010 ReelWorld Film Festival. The turning point in her career as a documentary filmmaker came 10 years ago, when she made a film called 'Ryan's Well', about a six-year-old boy who heard that people in Africa were dying without clean water and saved pennies in a cookie tin to raise money to build a well in Uganda. It was broadcast to a national Canadian audience and received a phenomenal response. Today, the subjects closest to Krishna's heart are those that deal with children, women and social issues. But, most importantly, the story behind every film that she makes has to be a good one.

"It was actually television that got me into this field. As a youth, I'd watch a programme called 'Youth Forum' on Doordarshan... The producer invited me to the show and I went on to host the same programme."

[Photographs Available]

Pakistan
In Pakistan's Hour Of Need, GenNext Responds
Zofeen T. Ebrahim

They are not asking for money They just need your old T-shirts, which they can recycle into essential items such as blankets, pillows, sleeping bags, hammocks and caps. The Gullak T-shirt Drive, the brainchild of young designer Ammara Gul Agha, is a unique attempt at helping the millions of flood-affected people in Pakistan. Today, it has caught the fancy of hundreds of young Pakistanis, who are responding by conducting their own small clothes collection drives to power Agha's efforts. With the lives of more than 20 million people in spate, youngsters across Pakistan are tweeting, texting, setting up Facebook pages and emailing information on what they are doing and what they need.

"We all learn about recycling as art students but this idea never occurred to me and I think what Agha is doing is brilliant."

[Photographs Available]

India
Maximum City, Minimum Opportunities: How Mumbai's Unorganised Women Workers Cope
Geeta Seshu

Laxmi, 27, employed for the last eight years in an engineering unit, may be commuting for long hours, may get a meagre pay, may have to come home after a day of backbreaking work only to get on to doing household chores, but she still does not want to give up her job to either stay at home or work as a domestic. Every morning, scores of young Mumbai women alight from local trains at the Nala Sopara station and head to one of the numerous factories in the area that manufacture anything from electrical goods to garments to machine parts. The self-esteem and camaraderie these women experience as they catch up with their friends on their way to and from work may be a major attraction for them, but unorganised workers have low wages, no benefits and dismal working conditions.

The work-station is a long bench and the women get individual high stools to sit on. "They don't want us to get too comfortable otherwise we won't work as fast as we should," laughs Laxmi.

[Photographs Available]

India
Rasoolpur's Gang of Girls Take Charge
Anjali Singh

A quaint school building in Rasoolpur village in the remote district of Bahraich in Uttar Pradesh has been the site of a powerful rights-based campaign to address the problems of corruption being faced by the local people. But what was particularly - and delightfully - surprising about this campaign was the fact that it was anchored by local women. Today, eight years on, they are still at it. The latest cause that these gutsy Rasoolpur girls have espoused is to expose a huge scam in public foodgrain distribution.

"We used to guard the school building day and night, brandishing 'chappals' and 'jhadus' (slippers and brooms) to keep away the headmaster's goons from tampering with the evidence."

[Photographs Available]