She walked alone 3800 km across 11 states and 230 days and covered the stretch from Kanyakumari to Jammu & Kashmir on a mission to create awareness about the safety of women in India. Srishti Bakshi, a UN women champion for change and a GOQii Fellow of 2018 undertook this mission in support of Women Empowerment. Today, May 19th she will be doing a night walk in Mumbai and reclaim the night as a safe space for women and girls.
She story is interesting from having a good corporate job to starting her social initiative CrossBow, a movement which aims to empower women and make India a safer place for them. The story starts from when she was living with her husband in Hong Kong with a perfect job and everything was good until one day when she realized that while they were being appreciated for being from India but in the same breath she also heard people saying how unsafe India is for women. This kind of disappointed her and Srishti wanted to do something to change this mindset that India is unsafe for women.
She gave up her corporate job and started CrossBow, She prepared a whole year and underwent extensive physical training — muscle repair therapy — before she started off. She started her mission on Sep 15, 2017,, with at least 65 stops along the route where she has been conducting workshops with women on various themes including digital and financial literacy.
When asked how exhausting was it for her to be on the road walking for 230 days she says, “Apart from the logistical nightmare, the journey was mentally exhausting as I would meet at least a 100 people daily and listen to their issues and try and come up with solutions”.
Let’s join Srishti on her Mumbai Night Walk. Prior to the walk, the event starts at 5 pm at High Street Phoenix, Mumba with power-packed performances by Sofa Ashraf, Aranya Johar, Rekha Bhardwaj and the likes After which there is a public night walk from High Street Phoenix to Haji Ali. The night will end with Srishti continuing to walk up to Gateway of India.
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