CORO India is a community-based organisation working in Maharashtra and Rajasthan. For over 38 years, it has focused on strengthening the agency of marginalized communities by fostering attitudinal shifts, building leadership, and nurturing political consciousness. Its work encourages individuals to see themselves as active citizens and to collectively reclaim their rights within a constitutional framework.
Mast Mahila Mandali emerged from the Right to Pee campaign, a CORO initiative that has, for over 15 years, led a city-wide effort in Mumbai advocating for free, clean, and safe public and community sanitation facilities for women and people across genders.
sujata khandekar
Dr Sujata Khandekar has been working with transformative grassroots initiatives for over three decades. She has also co-founded the Atta Deep Academy of Leadership (Atta Deep Educational Foundation), which focuses on building and sharing community knowledge through collective processes and local ownership.
Her doctoral work, Meanings of Women’s Empowerment, was conducted with seven co-researchers using the methodology of Feminist Cooperative Inquiry, a unique approach that draws from participatory and feminist research traditions. She holds an M.A. in Education, Gender and International Development from the Institute of Education, University of London, and was a MacArthur Foundation India Leadership Development Fellow (2000–2003). She is currently a Senior Ashoka Fellow.
Sujata is also a visiting faculty at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, and has published widely in national and international journals. Her year-long column in the regional newspaper Loksatta reflects on feminist thought through the lived experiences of women leaders. Her Marathi book Aashevin Aasha draws from her work at the grassroot level.
(Founding Director CORO India)