KOCHI: She topped the news in the past when she headed to the White House after getting an invite from First Lady Michelle Obama for the United State of Women Summit. The youngster has not looked back ever since. Besides founding the Red Elephant Foundation, based in Chennai, to be the voice of civilian peace-building and women empowerment, she has volunteered for sixteen different initiatives over a span of three years as a UN online volunteer.
Her latest contribution is the Saahas app, founded to help survivors of gender abuse to get help without delay. Kirthi, who was in Kochi for an event, says the idea occurred to her when one of her friends from the United Kingdom sent her several SOS messages in the middle of the night. “She was caught in an abusive relationship with her husband and had escaped from her house. She spent a day switching trains until she could muster enough courage to call India and ask for the help of her parents. They were able to get in touch with a shelter, where she was taken care of. Her father brought her back to India, where she now lives, while proceedings for her divorce are underway,” she says.
Kirthi says she was shaken because her friend had put her trust in her, and she was asleep. “What if there were many women like her, seeking help from across oceans, simply because they don’t know how to seek help locally?” she asks. Her organisation Red Elephant Foundation got in touch with several of the 5,000 organisations from across the globe for the app.
Founding the Red Elephant Foundation
Kirthi says she wanted to become a doctor to ‘help people’ until she realised that she could do it differently. She ended up becoming a corporate lawyer. But something in the system rubbed her the wrong way and she decided she had to start fighting from the grassroots level. ‘Many cases that have been sitting on the judicial benches could have been addressed had the people involved been aware of their rights at the inception,” she says.
So what led her to found the Red Elephant Foundation? “Though it was an idea in the making, it was the Delhi gang-rape case that catalysed the movement. On December 15, 2012, I had turned 25. On December 16, the gang-rape took place. On December 17, I was at the US Consulate General, at Chennai, receiving an award for my work with a US-based NGO called Delta Women. They worked for the rights of women in the US and Nigeria, and the right to education for children in Nigeria. When I received the award, I felt like a hypocrite - because here I was, receiving an award when there was so much more left to be done, and while a girl was battling for her life. I went to bed that night, thinking of how much we had allowed to pass in the name of ‘We are like this only’,” she said.
It was also the day when Kirthi realised she was blocking her own memories of facing abuse as a child. “I decided to do what I could on my own and began telling my story. Six months later, I could see the difference. Parents and to-be parents began to work with their children to have open conversations towards staying safe; two, I realised that I began to feel better,” she said.
Kirthi is also an author. Her new work is called The Doodler of Dimashq, which is the story of a Syrian child bride, who is born and brought up in Dimashq (Damascus), but (child) marriage takes her to Haleb (Aleppo), where she endures the war as it unfolds. Her ‘Girl Talk’, where Goddesses Lakshmi, Saraswati and Parvati speak to one another on a group chat on GodsApp, was also well received.