SANGRAM’s collectives: engaging communities in India to demand their rights

This AIDSTAR One case study series describes the work of SANGRAM, an NGO and a series of collective empowerment groups for stigmatised communities (sex workers, men who have sex with men, and transgender individuals) in six districts of southern Maharashtra and northern Karnataka. SANGRAM is unique in being a women-led, rights-based group that seeks to change community norms and tackle gender inequities at the grassroots level.

SANGRAM’s programmes seek to enable collective transformation—a change occurring to or within a group of persons that is sustainable at the individual, group, and systemic levels.

SANGRAM bases the process of transformation on a set of 10 rights-based steps or principles that create a cycle of further transformation:

• build trust through empathy and respect
• develop peer-led initiatives
• let the group reach “readiness”
• establish the collective
• respond to local needs
• focus on rights
• speak the language of rights
• venture into new territories
• strengthen the collective.

What worked well:

• the rights-based approach for community self-advocacy
• recognition of sex work as a profession
• advocating for sustainable improvements in health services.

Recommendations include:

• achieving full participation
• providing a model for partnership
• replication through engagement.