In this episode of The Women Inspire Aspire Podcast, I talk to Kanika Shharma about Child Safety.

Being introduced to child safety by phrases used by her son, Kanika Shharma became curious about the topic and did further research on it. That lead to she writing her book and eventually started working on child safety awareness creation on a broader scope.

In this podcast, she shares about how child sexual abuse rate is too high in India, how she researched about the wordings used about child sexual abuse, how she realized there were no books in India about the subject and all the books that were available were by western authors, how she wrote her book, and how she aligned with the terms of 'safe touch' and 'unsafe touch'.

As any important topic that needs awareness in a country with huge population like India, child safety also needs mass communication. We talked extensively about how, apart from her book, Kanika is making efforts to create awareness about child safety. We specifically talked about how to create awareness in the rural areas, the government schools, the anganwadis, etc. We also talked about how she plans to scale her work through strategies like social media. She believes that social media is a great medium to create awareness about this. She says whoever is taking this message forward need to believe in the cause and feel the passion for it, so that the message would have more impact.

She told us how the topic is a taboo, and parents are unwilling to talk about it to their children even though they are the best people to talk about it to the children. We also talked about the challenges in creating awareness in multiple local languages in India. She shared how it's important for keeping that communication channel open is very important, and having that trust established between the child and parents is so important, so that they can come and talk about anything that they want to talk to the parents.

She shared a few points for people who are planning to pursue a career in child safety.

As her hobbies and interests, she shared about reading books and contemporary dancing, and a specific societal issue that you should listen to the podcast to know about!

Sit back, Relax, and Listen In!

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In this episode of 'The Women Inspire Aspire Podcast', I speak to Nimmi Uday about designing experiences as a woman.

Nimmi Uday is a trainer and facilitator for enabling women and an inclusive society. As part of her work, she designs spaces and experiences for women to express themselves. In this podcast, we talked in detail about Nimmi's background, how she came about to work in this area, and the details of her work.

As a woman who felt restricted in many ways, Nimmi facilitates several ways for women. From

providing spaces to introspection and the necessary tools, conducting workshops, to running a Whatsapp group, her methods are varied.

We talked about the challenges that women face in the society today, with Nimmi stating a couple of important challenges that needs to be addressed. We also talked about how to scale her work and how to train more people to carry on the work.

Nimmi shared that Nature and reading philosophical and spiritual books are her interests.

As a societal issue, Nimmi cares deeply about an inclusive society where everyone feels valued and safe.

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In this episode of 'The Women Inspire Aspire Podcast', I talk to Madhuri Subbarao about environment and behavioral change.

Environment and sustainability are key topics today in the minds of people in the context of climate change and climate action. Having worked on lakes in Bengaluru for a long time, Madhuri now feels that it's the mindset of the people that need to change more than anything else to address the environmental concerns like waste management and recycling and efficient use of water. She honestly admits that her work so far has not made any dent, and has started efforts to instill behavioral change in people. When we talked about what areas she would work on, she mentioned several pillars including waste management, and water and electricity usage.

Having done quite a few podcasts on education, environment, and public relations and mass communications, I am always curious about how people address the twin problem of spreading the word out to the huge population of India and how do they follow-up to make sure that people are consistently following the new practices without resorting to the old methods. So I asked these questions to her, and she said she is in the planning process for those.

Addressing civic and sustainability issues need multi-pronged approach, and in addition to policy changes and implementation, addressing people's mindset also plays a key role. I am happy to have talked to Madhuri about the people side of things after having done some podcasts from the other perspectives.

Madhuri shared her hobbies and interests as well as the societal issues that she cares about. We ended the podcast with Madhuri expressing hope that people who listen to the podcast get curious and interested in this topic and see how they can implement these in their day-to-day life.

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