Archana Vaidya-Bansode is a 32 year old woman from Scheduled caste community. Before coming to Pune, she lived in Vidyanagar in Amravati district. Her neighborhood was in a slum area. She lived in basic minimal facility. Alcoholism was rampant in her neighborhood and literacy level amongst the community was quite low. Archana got lot of support from her mother and her brother. Her brother was arrested in a case and that molded the life of Archana. While defending the case, Archana went through lots of challenges as she was the oldest sibling in the family. This experience made her strong and confident. Archana did her education in Bachelor of Arts and also Masters Degree in Social Work from Nagpur University.
Archana started working in Manuski from 2007. She was involved in the Dalit Women Leadership project. She used to be part of various programs that were conducted in building and strengthening Dalit women’s leadership. Training programs, conferences, seminars, workshops, meetings were conducted by Manuski with Dalit women leaders from different states of India. This motivated her and she has made a goal in her life to work for Dalit women leadership and empowerment. Archana says “Dalit women must come out of their house and develop themselves in many ways. They should be liberal, independent in thinking and should get economically settled”.
After finishing her tenure at Manuski, Archana discussed with her friends and set up a group named “Krantijyoti” in the honour of Savitribai Phule. Later on she officially got the goup registered as a Trust. Krantijyoti works for the development and empowerment of women, which is which that Archana wanted to do in her life.
