Between Friends: Conversations with Maitri

Commemorating Women’s History Month! Tune in to our latest podcast episode where four South Asian women come together to discuss misogynistic behaviors and attitudes that we women face every day. From overtly offensive behaviors to subtle, normalized attitudes, we delve into the spectrum of experiences women face daily. Join us in identifying and confronting misogynistic attitudes and behaviors. Together, let’s explore strategies for dismantling this toxic culture and envision a future where equality thrives. Host: Nandini Ray, Sr. Manager Outreach, Prevention, and Policy Advocacy, Maitri Guests: Aarushi Kumar, Rika Alavi, Kashmira Patel (Maitri Volunteers) This project was made possible by funding provided by the County of Santa Clara Office of Gender-Based Violence Prevention. [www.sccendviolence.org] Please share your feedback here: https://forms.gle/Req1NfTSAYfUnYfD7 --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/maitribayarea/message

Are South Asian youth comfortable sharing their dating experiences with their parents? Do they receive enough guidance and support from their families in understanding the concept of healthy partner relationships? To discuss these questions we invited 3 South Asian youth community members. Hajra Usman, Sid Barathi, and Nidhi Satyagal joined us to shed light on the unique challenges South Asian youth face when navigating conversations about dating and relationships with their families. They also shared their recommendations on how both South Asian youth and adults can facilitate an environment of safe and open communication to have conversations on healthy partner relationships. Please listen to this insightful discussion and share this episode with your network. Feel free to share your recommendations with us at maitri@maitri.org. This project was made possible by funding provided by the County of Santa Clara Office of Gender-Based Violence Prevention. [www.sccendviolence.org] Our host: Nandini Ray has been involved in the gender justice movement since 2011. As the Sr. Manager of the Outreach & Prevention Program at Maitri, she leads community engagement and education efforts at Maitri, represents Maitri at community talks, panels, and in media, and provides culturally responsive training for DV advocates and service providers. Nandini curates, designs and hosts Maitri’s reputed Podcast series, “Between Friends” and leads social media outreach efforts. Hajra Usman is a clinical researcher assistant and a long-time Maitri volunteer. Sid Barathi is a recent graduate from UCSB. He currently works at a research lab and a clinic as a medical assistant. Nidhi Satyagal is the Prevention Program Associate at Maitri. She recently graduated from UCSB with a B.A. in Economics and a minor in History. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/maitribayarea/message

Female genital cutting/ mutilation has been recognized as a human rights violation by the World Health Organization. This topic is highly controversial due to its roots in cultural and religious practices so we should have multiple conversations to have community awareness around it. To discuss how we can end this oppressive practice and bring positive social change, we invited Mariya Taher, the co-founder and U.S. Executive Director of Sahiyo. Listen to this episode here! Visit: https://sahiyo.org/ This project was made possible by funding provided by the County of Santa Clara Office of Gender-Based Violence Prevention. [www.sccendviolence.org #EndDV, #maitripodcast, #maitriwww.maitri.org --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/maitribayarea/message

Mariam Azimi, a survivor with her courage and resilience not only paved her future with safety and dignity, but also gave support, guidance, and emotional confidence to many survivors that they needed after suffering from domestic violence. Mariam has been working relentlessly to break the stigma of divorce. In this Maitri podcast episode, Mariam shares her journey and hope. Mariam Azimi is the founder of Care2Elevate.space and established CircleofsiSTARhood (https://www.facebook.com/circleofsiSTARhood/about_details.) --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/maitribayarea/message

We invited Yasmin Azad, the author of Stay, Daughter on our podcast to talk about her experience and reflection on the dilemmas that Muslim women faced and are facing in balancing the rules of orthodox Islam with the freedom and innovations of the modern world. Fahria Khan, our Donor Engagement Manage had an in-depth conversation with the author. Please listen to the episode here! Yasmin Azad grew up in Sri Lanka and was among the first group of girls in her Muslim community to go away from home to pursue a university degree. After obtaining a B.A. in English, she married and moved to the United States where she raised her three children and worked as a mental health counselor. Her writing has been published in Navasilu, Solstice Literary Magazine, and The Massachusetts Review, and her memoir is Stay, Daughter: A Memoir of Muslim Girlhood. Read more about Stay Daughter: https://staydaughter.com/ Fahria Khan is the Donor Engagement Manager at Maitri. She is a community leader who has spent the last 20 years serving the community through various non-profit organizations, programs, and initiatives. #EndDV, #maitripodcast, #maitri, # YasminAzad, #MuslimGirlhood, #girls www.maitri.org This project was made possible by funding provided by the County of Santa Clara Office of Gender-Based Violence Prevention. [www.sccendviolence.org] --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/maitribayarea/message

In this episode, Flavia Agnes joined us to share her journey from a survivor to a trailblazer. Flavia Agnes is a women’s rights advocate, legal scholar, and one of the central figures of the women’s movement in India. Her own experience with domestic violence inspired her to become a women's rights lawyer. As co-founder of MAJLIS, a legal and cultural resource center in Mumbai, India, her primary engagement has been to provide quality legal services to women and children. **About Flavia Agnes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavia_Agnes **About Majlis: https://majlislaw.com/about/ Learn about Maitri: www.maitri.org This project was made possible by funding provided by the County of Santa Clara Office of Gender-Based Violence Prevention: https://desj.sccgov.org/ogbvp --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/maitribayarea/message

In this episode we discussed inter-generational cultural conflicts that many South Asian parents and teens face. Three South Asian teens, Tara Sardana, Alina Shah and Kaushal Namuduri shared their thoughts on how this cultural conflict can be damaging for individual, family and community well-being. If you are a parent or a teen, then you must listen to this episode to learn what can be done to reduce and end intergenerational cultural conflict. Please share this episode with your network. Feel free to share your recommendations with us at maitri@maitri.org. This project was made possible by funding provided by the County of Santa Clara Office of Gender-Based Violence Prevention. [www.sccendviolence.org] --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/maitribayarea/message

Did you know that between 2000 and 2018, an astonishing 23,588 children were married in California alone? This sparks the question as to why it continues and who opposes the reform initiatives. In 2023, SB404 was introduced by lawmakers to prohibit marriages before the age of 18; however, it was changed to only make it a misdemeanor to arrange non-legally recognized child marriages without actually ending child marriages in California. Passing the Senate, SB404 awaits a vote in the Assembly Committee on Public Safety. In this podcast, the founder of Unchained At Last (www.unchainedatlast.org), Fraidy Reiss had an insightful discussion with Maitri’s Director of Survivor Advocacy, Zakia Afrin and Senior Manager of Client Services, Jaya Suresh. Fraidy Reiss is a forced marriage survivor turned activist. Through Unchained, Fraidy has helped hundreds of survivors across the U.S. to escape forced marriages, and she now leads a growing national movement to end child marriage in every U.S. state and at the federal level. Fraidy’s research and writing on forced and child marriage have been published extensively, including in the New York Times, Washington Post and Journal of Adolescent Health and by Oxford Press, making her one of the foremost experts on these abuses in the U.S. Read More about Fraidy’s Reiss: https://www.unchainedatlast.org/founder-executive-director/ Relevant Resources on Forced Marriages: California Senate Bill 404 on Child Marriage ban https://legiscan.com/CA/text/SB404/id/2832415 California Coalition to End Child Marriage https://cacoalitiontoendchildmarriage.org/ It is time to end child marriages in the US https://www.cfr.org/blog/its-time-end-child-marriage-united-states Asia Child marriage initiative: Summary of research in Bangladesh, India and Nepal https://www.icrw.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/PLAN-ASIA-Child-Marriage-3-Country-Study.pdf #EndDV, #maitripodcast, #maitri, #Endchildmarriage # Fraidyreiss #unchainedatlast www.maitri.org This project was made possible by funding provided by the County of Santa Clara Office of Gender-Based Violence Prevention. [www.sccendviolence.org] --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/maitribayarea/message

Marital rape has been a crime in all 50 States in the US since 1993. The current California criminal code makes no distinction between rape by a stranger and an intimate partner or spouse. The non-consensual sexual relations within a marriage are subject to the same penalty and consequences resulting in registration in the sex offenders’ list among others. As an agency primarily serving immigrant survivors from South Asia, it has posed and continues to pose a unique challenge for Maitri in communicating with survivors and delivering a message of no tolerance to sexual violence within a marriage. How can we, as advocates, address this cultural conditioning, belief system and yet be trauma-informed and sensitive to our survivors? How do we bring up this conversation with both our survivors and our community? In this episode of Between Friends podcast, Maitri Self sufficiency Coordinator Tejeswi Dodda and Legal Advocate Urja Patel discuss some aspects of the community perspective on Marital rape and consent in intimate relationships. Tejeswi Dodda is the Self Sufficiency Coordinator at Maitri. Tejeswi has a background as a journalist and activist highlighting issues around women and girls in India. She has extensive experience in nonprofit work, with a focus on social impact, gender justice, and advocacy for survivors, and over seven years of experience in the DV space. With Maitri since 2021, she is responsible for programming for Maitri's transitional housing and economic empowerment programs. Urja Patel is the Legal Advocate at Maitri. Urja Patel earned a B.S in Psychology with a minor in Women and Gender studies. She currently works as a Legal Advocate at Maitri with the intention of utilizing her educational background to provide assistance to individuals of marginalized communities specifically relating to issues of gender violence. As a child of first-generation immigrants who did not have the proper knowledge of resources available to them in this country, she aspires to help navigate other first -generation South Asians through the legal system of the United States by providing education to these individuals on their rights. This episode is hosted by Eboni Collins, Maitri’s Digital Media Associate who has a background in Communication Studies and Digital Marketing. Resources Mentioned in the Discussion: Maitri Findings: Community Perspective on Marital Rape & Consent in Intimate Relationships: https://maitri.org/reports Presentation on Findings recorded Live April 28, 2023: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IB8GcLwU2Kc&t=10s Please help us improve our podcast by taking a quick survey: https://shorturl.at/nozD7 This project was made possible by funding provided by the County of Santa Clara Office of Gender-Based Violence Prevention. [www.sccendviolence.org] #MaitriBetweenFriendsPodcast #MaitriBayArea #MaritalRape #MaitriStaff #Tejeswi Dodda #Urja Patel --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/maitribayarea/message

While men have always played an important role in shaping public policies and community awareness in many areas, domestic violence prevention often remains ignored within this group. How do we engage South Asian men in the movement? Maitri's long time advocate Zakia Afrin sits down with S Suresh, a past member of Maitri leadership and outgoing Board member in the Statewide organization CPEDV to discuss men in the DV prevention movement, his passion for social justice and writing novels in Tamil. As a community leader and activist, Suresh is vocal on social justice issues including domestic violence, gun control, LGBTQ rights, religious and caste-based discrimination, environmental rights, and racism in all shapes and forms. Prior to joining The Partnership board, Suresh served as a member of the Board of Trustees at Maitri for three years. During his tenure there, he participated actively in issues critical to addressing domestic violence in general, and within the South Asian community in specific. He also played an instrumental role in helping Maitri to bring men into difficult conversations around domestic violence. A product executive with more than 25 years of experience in enterprise software, Suresh is a writer, avid hiker, dog lover, amateur actor and environmentally conscious. Articles by S Suresh at Fair Observer https://www.fairobserver.com/author/sankaran-suresh/ Books by S Suresh in Tamil: https://sandhyapublications.com/author/62bd89ccffdfba547069d667 Available in Santa Clara Library District. Zakia Afrin: Zakia has been an advocate for immigrant women at Maitri for over 16 years and currently serves as the Director of Survivor Advocacy programs at Maitri. She is a senior fellow and Adjunct professor of International Law at Golden Gate University in San Francisco. Zakia represents clients with their immigration needs and drives Maitri’s policy advocacy efforts uplifting the voices of immigrant survivors. She founded Auditiya in 2020, a social and cultural platform for the Bangladeshi diaspora in the US. Please help us improve our podcast by taking this quick survey: https://shorturl.at/puBGJ This project was made possible by funding provided by the County of Santa Clara Office of Gender-Based Violence Prevention. [www.sccendviolence.org] --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/maitribayarea/message

Immigration status based on marital relationships often creates barriers for a victim and survivor of domestic violence to address the abuse. Yet there are rights and resources available for individuals in those situations and many opportunities to advocate for policies focused on immigration reform. In this episode, we hear about Maitri's immigration assistance program observing its 12 years in existence and important lessons learnt throughout the process. This project was made possible by funding provided by the County of Santa Clara Office of Gender-Based Violence Prevention. [www.sccendviolence.org] #MaitriBayArea #ImmigrationProgram #Survivors #AssistanceProgram --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/maitribayarea/message

A shift is taking place in our community as the stigma that has always surrounded mental health is beginning to fade. RCoz is providing a platform in normalizing our conversations around mental health. Many community members are sharing their stories openly to let others know that it is necessary to take care of our emotional wellbeing. Listen to this podcast to know why people are talking about mental health, what they are sharing and how RCoz is helping. Please visit Rcoz.us to find many wonderful stories. After listening please take this short quiz to help improve our podcast: https://shorturl.at/wN245 This project was made possible by funding provided by the County of Santa Clara Office of Gender-Based Violence Prevention. [www.sccendviolence.org] #MentalHealth #SouthAsianCulture #MaitriBayArea #RCoz --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/maitribayarea/message

In this podcast South Asian youth are talking about different stress factors that impact their mental health, how they need support from their families, community and system to take care of their emotional well being and community's role in breaking the stigma associated with help seeking. After listening please take this short quiz to help improve our podcast! https://shorturl.at/mzQ03 Resources: National Alliance on Mental Illness: https://nami.org Community Health Awareness Council (CHAC). openpathcollective.org The Hume Center AACI Wellness center. AACI.org This project was made possible by funding provided by the County of Santa Clara Office of Gender-Based Violence Prevention. [www.sccendviolence.org] #MentalHealth #MaanMukti #YouthMentalHealth #MHAM #UCLA --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/maitribayarea/message

Listen to this powerful narrative from Shamita Das Dasgupta about the South Asian Gender Justice Movement. In the seventies and eighties, South Asian women across the nation started addressing feminism that was different from white feminism where issues faced by immigrant women were raised. This momentum led to the growth of the South Asian gender justice movement which impacted South Asian survivors, advocates, communities, and the larger society. Please listen to this episode to learn about the early stage of the movement building, where we are now and where we need to go. After listening, please take this short quiz on our Podcast: https://shorturl.at/beEPY Thank you for listening! This project was made possible by funding provided by the County of Santa Clara Office of Gender-Based Violence Prevention. [www.sccendviolence.org] #EndDV, #MaitriPodcast #Maitri #TDVAM www.maitri.org --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/maitribayarea/message

This month, the Maitri podcast was able to bring on four UCLA students to discuss what a healthy partner relationship means to Gen- Z. What does a healthy relationship look like for young college students? What do they expect from their partners? All of this and more is discussed during this months episode of Between Friends. This project was made possible by funding provided by the County of Santa Clara Office of Gender-Based Violence Prevention. [www.sccendviolence.org] #EndDV, #MaitriPodcast #Maitri #TDVAM www.maitri.org --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/maitribayarea/message

Maitri joined South Asian SOAR in a remembrance campaign to honor and remember 10 beautiful souls who we lost to disturbing acts of gender-based violence in 2022. And we are dedicating our first episode of the new year to show our grief and frustration toward these senseless acts of gender based violence. Representatives from South Asian SOAR joined us in the discussion. This episode is our effort to keep our community members engaged as we continue to discuss on how we can prevent gender based violence and bring awareness to the South Asian communities affected by it. This project was made possible by funding provided by the County of Santa Clara Office of Gender-Based Violence Prevention. [www.sccendviolence.org] #EndDV, #maitripodcast, #maitri, www.maitri.org --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/maitribayarea/message

Sharing a powerful story of a survivor. She suffered violence and abuse inflicted by someone she loved and trusted. Her life has been a continuous struggle during and after the abuse yet she didn’t give up. She turned her pain into purpose and started a new journey to find her peace. #SurvivorSpeaks, #MaitriPodcast, #EndDV This project was made possible by funding provided by the County of Santa Clara Office of Gender-Based Violence Prevention. [www.sccendviolence.org] --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/maitribayarea/message

South Asian youth are doing their part in breaking the stigma associated with mental health. In this episode students are discussing some common issues that can affect emotional wellbeing of community youth, how generational and cultural gaps can impact their mental health and what can be done to uphold the message that our mental health is too precious to risk. To find resources and information please Visit: nami.org/Home, MannMukti.org, www.humecenter.org. Sutter health.org. https://www.instagram.com/ucdmannmukti/ . --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/maitribayarea/message

PurpLE Health Foundation, a non-profit transforming healthcare for survivors of gender-based violence through comprehensive healthcare, research, and economic opportunity. A wonderful initiative from health care professionals in treating women who have endured intimate partner violence, sexual assault and human trafficking. Dr. Anita Ravi, the CEO and co-founder of this nonprofit shared her experience and hope on our podcast. Know about the PurpLE Health Foundation: www.PurpLEHealthFoundation.org --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/maitribayarea/message

Archaic expectations in a marriage, playing to reasoning fallacies like "appeal to tradition," enforcing strict gender roles, these and some other similar narratives can be used as justification for perpetrating domestic abuse. These abusive tactics can be particularly hard to prove as they border on emotional abuse and can be damaging to a victim's psyche. In this podcast, we are joined by long term California resident Ganesh Gigamani who is a social observer and lends his voice to bring about cultural reforms in society. He shares his experiences bye delving deep into the issue of how seemingly normal cultural nuances can be downright insensitive to the victim and can be a red flag leading to a domestic violence situation. This project was made possible by funding provided by the County of Santa Clara Office of Gender-Based Violence Prevention. [www.sccendviolence.org] #maitripodcast, #maitri, www.maitri.org --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/maitribayarea/message