Gender Resource Centre (GRC): The Gender Resource Centre is an initiative of the Govt. of N.C.T.

of Delhi which has been applied to vulnerable areas throughout Delhi, especially the slum communities and resettlement colonies. A GRC has been opened in each of these communities which is run on behalf of the govt by NGOs that were already working in the field and were identified by the govt to implement the GRC project. In the community iof Madanpur Khader and nearby areas CASP was chosen by the govt of Delhi to run the GRC. The objectives of the GRC as envisaged by the govt. of N.C.T. of Delhi are as follows: y To act as a catalyst for making Delhi safe for women through social, legal and economic empowerment y To improve the health of women y To impart skills for specific trades and to provide forward and backward linkages enabling women to be a part of the productive workforce and obtain good remuneration y To provide facilities with linkages for school dropouts to return to mainstream and to provide non formal functional literacy y To establish a mechanism for linking existing govt. schemes for women and to enable women to access it better y To raise awareness on issues of relevance and provide legal literacy about womens rights y To set up a documentation centre which will act as a clearing house for information on women and will work towards a system of affiliation of the organizations working on the same issue The concept of GRC was envisaged as an instrument to ensure social, economic and legal empowerment for women. For this, various components were included in the GRC like: y Self help groups of women: Women of the community are encouraged and facilitated to form SHGs. These can help the women, through thrift and micro credit and also capacity-building and micro-enterprise, to achieve economic empowerment and consequently a voice in the decision making of the family. y Vocational training for women: Women and girls from the community are encouraged to learn skills which they can use to become economically and socially empowered. Till October 2010 classes were held for 4 courses: o Computer application o Beauty culture

o Cutting and tailoring o Embroidery Non-formal education: Classes are provided for women and girls on several levels: o Basic literacy and numeracy o Std V o Std VIII o Std X Medical services: A gynaecologist visits the GRC every fortnight and her services and medicines can be availed by the community people free of cost. Recently the Delhi govt. is implementing, through the GRC, a project aimed at promoting menstrual health and hygiene among adolescent girls as well as older women. Under this project awareness sessions have been conducted with large no. of women from the community. Also, sanitary napkins are provided at half the market price to the residents of the community through the GRC, to promote a culture of their use. Health camps: Day-long open-for-all health camps are regularly organized by the GRC wherein community people are provided medical consultancy and medicines. Nutrition camps: These camps are regularly organized in each block and are attended by around 50 women each. Through the camps awareness is generated about the importance of nutrition and women are advised on the preparation of low-cost nutritious food. The camps also provide information about the food bebnificial for people suffering from diseases like T.B. etc. Legal awareness: A woman lawyer visits the GRC twice a week during which she conducts community meetings for generating awareness regarding legal issues and womens rights. She also provides counseling and legal advice and services to community women and their families. A para-legal pressure group has been formed in the community which also works for awareness generation and handles cases of domestic violence etc.

All the services provided at the GRC are completely free-of-cost for the community people. Apart from women empowerment the GRC also works to implement the Mission Convergence (Samajik Suvidha Sangam) of the Delhi govt. This is a project whereby the GRC has been expanded into a Suvidha Kendra(SK) and made the single window interface between the government and the community, for various welfare schemes of the govt (such as widow pension, elderly pension, handicapped pension, scholarship for disabled students, Integrated Child Development Scheme

(ICDS), Swarna Jayanti Shahri Rozgar Yojana, Rashtriya Swastha Beema Yojana etc). Under the Mission Convergence the following activities are undertaken by the GRC-SK: y Information desk y Enrollment for schemes y Processing of applications and forwarding the same to the District Resource Centre (DRC) y Verification of benificiaries y Grievance redressal and development of effective feedback mechanism y Awareness generation regarding govt. schemes. The GRC-SK also carries out the Samajik Suvidha Sangam survey conducted by the Delhi govt to identify vulnerable populations.