Mois : février 2007

She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

They tell about her: « Lalita Ramdas stepped out of a conventional and hierarchical environment to become a fearless voice in support of secularism, peace, and nuclear disarmament, often in very troubled times ».

Read: The Politics of Cricket ó Some Reflections, by Lalita Ramdas.

Lalita Ramdas – India

She works for the Pak-India Forum for Peace and Democracy PIFPD (mentionned only once, on ‘Proceedings, Recommendations and Declaration of The Third Joint Convention Calcutta‘, December 28-31, 1996).

Lalita Ramdas (born 1940) stepped out of a conventional, hierarchical environment to become a voice in support of alternative education, gender sensitivity, secularism, peace, and nuclear disarmament. In the early 1980s, she put in place pathbreaking initiatives for development education in a number of elite schools. Living in a small village in India’s west coast, she is involved in the life of the local community while pursuing citizens’ peace initiatives with Pakistan and contributing to the global adult education movement.One day she is sitting with a group of teachers in a village school talking about the violence that often characterizes local election processes, and how teachers can try to counter this by instilling values such as mutual respect, non-violence, and harmony in the minds of the young.

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Linked with Sarvodaya, Sri Lanka.

She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

They says about her: « As there was a curfew in town, the oath-taking ceremony was held inside Annapurna’s house:

13-year-old Annapurna also took it-a vow to serve the country, which she keeps to this day ».

Annapurna Moharana – India

She works for the Kasturba Gandhi Memorial National Trust KGMNT, for Sarvodaya,
and for the Utkal Naagari Lipi Parishad UNLP (no website).

Annapurna Moharana has been working since she was 13 to carry forward the Gandhian tradition of peaceful protest and refusing to compromise with corruption or oppression. In the past 75-odd years, Annapurna has worked on issues ranging from setting up a tribal residential school for girls, sensitizing dacoits (members of robber bands) to pacifism, and resisting the 1975 emergency, to setting up a nursing training center that recruits and trains young women in maternity services.

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Linked with the Mahila Samakhya Programme, and with the Educational Resource Unit ERU.

She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

They say about her: « A single tribal woman day laborer stood up to usurious landowners, and then went on to change the developmental complexion of an entire village ».

Duiji – India

She learned by the connection with the Mahila Samakhya Programme.

Duiji (born 1942) has single-handedly changed the face of an entire village. She mobilized her community against caste-based oppression and injustice. Her efforts have led to a drastic reduction in atrocities against the Kol community. Caste-based sexual violence is practically nonexistent in her village now, and the tribals are no longer afraid of approaching the police and courts for redress. The literacy rates have shot up and the women participate more actively in community affairs.

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Linked with National Bal Bhavan, and with The Springdales Education Society.

She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

It is told about her: Rajni’s vision is to find ways to make the educational systems more humane, equitable, and relevant to the changing world scenario, using technology to link schools and youth globally.

Mrs. Rajni Kumar, Chairperson, Springdales Education Society, has been honoured an Honorary Doctorate degree by the Middlesex University, London, at Wembley Conference Centre on July 6th 2005. (full text).

She says: « They taught and I learnt. More importantly, through these Punjabi girls and their displaced families, I was brought face-to-face with the harsh realities of life: how lives can be shattered overnight, and how people can find the resilience and the courage to pick up the threads and build their lives anew. I marveled at it. Education was their lifeline for tomorrow. And working together, we forged lifelong friendships that endure even today ».

Rajni Kumar – India (formerly Nancie Joyce Margaret Jones)

She works for the Springdales School, New Delhi.

Rajni Kumar (formerly, Nancie Joyce Margaret Jones) was born in England on 5 March 1923 to British parents and educated at Tollington Grammar School, London. She came to India with her Indian fiancé to join the freedom struggle, and made the country her home. In 1950, she set up a school for girls displaced by the partition. This work led her to conceptualize an institution that would link the process of education with life itself, and Springdales School was born in 1955. Her many innovative school programs’ incorporating peace and human rights education in the curriculum, literacy projects, the ‘adopt a gran’ project, and many others have altered India’s outlook on education.

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Linked with Indian HIV & AIDS statistic.

She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

It is said about Murari Prameela: She is a dear carer to victims of HIV/AIDS and those abandoned by their families and friends in her native Guntur district, which has one of the highest percentages of HIV/Aids in India.

She says: « I do not believe in hearing a lot of lecture on love. It is our actions that matter ». And she said about a girl they cared: « We were not able to save her, but we took care of her, enabling her to live for another three years ».

She says also: « Not many people can afford medical care. The people who live on the streets do not have money or people to look after them ».

Murari Prameela – India

She works for Women for the Mercy Integrated Rural Health Care Ministries (Sorry, link not found in the internet).

A nurse and multipurpose healthworker who leads a team of seven in her native Guntur district in Andhra Pradesh, Murari Prameela is a friend and a carer for the sick and the dying. She targets sick people abandoned by their families. On average, she helps about 300 patients a month, among them Aids/HIV sufferers, and patients with leprosy, tuberculosis, high blood pressure, and heart trouble. Murari and her team also help polio-stricken children, street-children, sick beggars, and impoverished pregnant women who have little support and no access to healthcare. A lesson on Mother Theresa in her 8th grade reader inspired Murari Prameela, a resident of Guntur district in Andhra Pradesh, to follow in her footsteps. There was much to be done since most people here were extremely poor, and 70 per cent of the population lived in villages, working mostly as agricultural laborers with scant access to medicare.

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Linked with Schools in Kerala, India.

She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

People tell about her: Leelakumari’s motivation and pragmatism are exemplary, her signal ability being to draw diverse parties into her struggle: villagers, courts, political parties, environmental groups, and doctors.

Leelakumari Amma – India

She works for the Government of Kerala.

Leelakumari Amma (born 1948) won a one-woman campaign against the pesticide lobby, government departments, and her village’s powerful plantation owners. Upon realizing that the spraying of the pesticide Endosulfan (classified as “highly toxic” by the US Environmental Protection Agency) was endangering her son’s health, she won a court order banning the aerial spraying of pesticides on her village. Her struggle has set off wide-ranging discussions on pesticide impact on health, with countries such as Cambodia banning the use of Endosulfan.Leelakumari Amma, the seventh of eleven children, was born on February 25, 1948 in a small village called Kizhuthiri near Ramapuram in Kottayam district, Kerala. Her father was a primary school teacher, her mother a home-maker. When Leelakumari was two years old, her family moved to Payyavur in Kannur district in northern Kerala (then called Malabar): her father had been asked by a Christian missionary to teach in a new school being set up for the settlers. While at school, Leelakumari joined up for an agriculture certificate course.

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