Dhaarchidi

Dhaarchidi is a group of young women who aim to understand, question and create responses to the socio-environmental challenges in their communities in the lower Himalayas. The group is coming together to use direct-education methods to unravel complex stories and experiences that women live. In the rural, mountainous region where they gather, women do more than 70% of agricultural, forest and household work, yet are marginally involved in telling their own stories or any decision making processes. The group wishes to produce creative, counter-cultural local and online expressions, in order to raise questions and build understanding about issues that are seldom talked about. Covid-19 has seen the shifting of communications online, and the reduction of public gatherings and assembly. During this time, people’s lives and livelihoods have been challenged by existing and new harmful socio-environmental processes. Dhaarchidi sees the need to create reflective practices and spaces, to extend our collective work by publishing local (her)stories, raising voices about rights and wrongs and providing artistic responses, through the perspectives of women, to the ongoing crises.