The more you start fighting for human rights, the more you get familiar with human wrongs. That’s what happened with Trisha Shetty, an Indian activist for gender equality and the founder of SheSays. She has continually strived to fight against human rights abuses and believes in speaking up and demanding better from our world leaders. It is her sheer resilience and perseverance that Levi’s® is celebrating with their #IShapeMyWorld campaign.
Trisha’s organization empowers the country’s women to act against sexual violence by providing education, medical, legal and psychological support. It fights against gender-based discrimination and builds a nexus of support in domains of sanitisation, education, health care, public safety, and public policy. Over the years, Trisha and SheSays have fought against human rights abuses and helped more than 60,000 young people through online workshops.
After establishing her non-profit organisation in 2015, she was announced as one of the 17 UN Youth Leaders for the Sustainable Development Goals by UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, in 2016. In 2018, she received specialised training and mentorship from the Crown of the United Kingdom. Trisha has received the Queen’s Young Leader Award, presented by Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace and has also aided Michelle Obama in launching the Global Girls Alliance under the Obama Foundation.
Trisha is part of the 7th season of the Levi’s® #IShapeMyWorld campaign that started on International Women’s Day 2021. She’s one of the seven fearless women featured by the digital initiative and here’s everything you need to know about her.
On Speaking Up At Every Possible Chance She Gets
It might shock you that fewer than 6% of sexual assault cases are reported to the police in our country. Trisha with the help of her organization educates, rehabilitates and empowers women to take direct action against sexual violence. She does all of this by providing digital literacy, advocacy and facilitating access to psychiatric and psychological services.
Trisha realises that active human wrongs have a real desire to break our spirits and to challenge it, one must speak up. While talking about it, she says, “I try and speak up at every chance I get because the cost of silence is deafening.”
On Showing Up Until Justice Is Served
Trisha believes in standing up in solidarity until justice is served as that’s the way change happens. She says, “You start from a very idealistic perspective that ‘change must happen, I will bring change!’ You don’t show up knowing that you will win, you show up just because not showing up has a very big cost.”
In 2016, the social activist was contacted by a father, whose four-and-a-half-years old daughter was sexually abused by their local shop owner’s relative. Even more infuriating were the systematic human rights abuses that followed next. From hospitals unlawfully charging the survivor’s family for medical care to the authorities forcing the girl to identify the abuser, the active human wrongs tried to break down the family’s spirit at every stage.
After fighting for justice for years, the accused was punished for his unforgivable act. While recalling this instance, Trisha says, “There’s one of those moments where you get a call from the four-year-old child’s father. After four years of fighting a case, he tells you that the rapist has been convicted for ten years. And, you just cry together on the phone.”
It is moments like these that remind her why she started in the first place. “You remember that you’ve worked for so long and four years later, he’s in jail…he’s not going to abuse other kids. And then, you show up again,” she says.
According to Trisha, when you think of resilience, you should think of it like a muscle—two steps forward and one step back, three steps forward and five steps back. But ultimately, it all comes down to moving forward by showing up and demanding more. That’s exactly how we all can bring a change in this world and we laud the activist for reminding us that.
Stay tuned for the latest episode of #IShapeMyWorld!
This is a sponsored post for Levis**
Featured Image: Levis
