Maitri, the 16-year-old San Francisco organisation, is looking to expand its work not only with abused South Asian women but also young people in the community who could face violence from their partners, or students who may become victims of violence from their peers.
"We are looking at all kinds of violence that is affecting our communities," says Maitri President Dr Mukta Sharangpani. "Maitri's main concern is abused and battered South Asian women, and we have been helping them in our shelter, or in their homes to fight the abuse. More importantly, we support the women in empowering themselves and become part of a mainstream society. But we are also looking at different kinds of violence."
The Maitri website offers vivid examples of violence in the younger South Asian community (with victims' and perpetrators' names changed), and advising potential victims on how to find help. The examples encompass different kinds of violence, including dating violence, school violence and family violence.
Dr Sharangpani says Maitri also reminds young men that they can seek help to protect themselves against from violence. Suicide prevention is another task the organisation is serious about, and women are not the only ones who are its focus.
She also says Maitri is more than an organisation that helps abused women make a choice. There are a few women, she says, who despite systematic abuse can't bring themselves to leave their husbands. Even they can benefit from counseling, she continues. Maitri's motto is: Helping Women to Help Themselves.
Maitri was one of the first few South Asian organisations that realised that helping battered or abused women required much more than finding them a shelter away from the abused homes. Soon, Maitri volunteers were helping women learn English, teaching them skills needed for a variety of jobs, and preparing them to be interviewed. But every activity was designed to keep in mind that boosting the self-esteem of women, even the well educated women who had been abused, was of great importance.
Maitri, founded by novelist Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and a handful of friends, had to fight hard to overcome the prejudices and insulated nature of the Indian community, and the efforts of some affluent Indians in the high tech world who did not want to speak about domestic violence or anything negative in the Indian community.
"They did not want to talk about the problems of the so-called invisible people," Divakaruni says. "But we were not going to be silenced."
Dr Sharangpani is an example of the newer generation of young women continuing the work started by the pioneers.
"I have been involved in street theatre as a student in Mumbai," she says. "I have been interested in women's issues from my teen years in India."
When she was studying for her MBA in San Jose, she took part in women's causes, working with mainstream women's groups.
"I have a very happy marriage," says Dr Sharangpani, who did her PhD in anthropology from Stanford University. "But when I heard about Maitri, I decided to spend much of my time volunteering for it."
Dr Sharangpani, whose current research involves violence in Mumbai's middle class families, says her grassroots experience helped her take Maitri forward. That experience includes working on suicide hotlines, volunteering with the Young Women's Christian Association as a rape crisis counselor, freelancing with street theater projects, and performing for social change.
"We have never turned a client away because of race, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation," she says. When non-South Asians approach Maitri, she says, its first concern is to find an appropriate, culturally sensitive resource for them. When that is not available, Maitri provides the assistance they need.
Like over 25 similar South Asian organisations across America, Maitri was started with the realisation that 'its clients do not shed their socialisation as smoothly as their domicile.' Their cultural needs are unique, says Dr Sharangpani. For example, South Asian domestic violence involves joint family/extended family abuse; long distance abuse and threats of abandonment.
Maitri's clients are as young as 17 while some clients are in their late 60s; they include women who have experienced abuse for the first time to women who have lived for years suffering it.
