Stree Aadhar Kendra

Stree Aadhar kendra (Women's Support Centre) focuses its creative energies on the four important issues that women from Maharashtra face : Violence Against Women, Mainstreaming of Gender Issues, Women in Disaster Situations, Capacity building of women at grassroots.
Stree Aadhar Kendra (Women's Support Centre) began as a response to patriarchal system and violence against women. It was a natural expression of assertion and had roots within deep sense of denial of subjugation of women in all walks of life. It was a natural response of women who wanted to protest and assert themselves, who wanted to secure their own rights so that they themselves could decide their own lives. They believed in working towards coming together and sharing their feelings and emotions to fight for their rights. They wanted some space where they would feel free and could build confidence within themselves to work towards achieving equal status for women as against men. It was a humble beginning and the small group began to explore the ways and means to express themselves and while doing so and trying to find the expression of it’s own, grown in size and spread.
It all began in early 80’s in the suburb of Pune city in Maharashtra, India.
It is difficult to pin-point the exact date of foundation of Stree Aadhar Kendra (SAK), though there is one official date of registration as it is registered as the Public Trust and also under Societies Registration Act. It is actually not advisable and proper to believe that such organisations begin at one particular date and it is also wrong to assume that the legal structure is the only form of such organisations. The reason mainly is that such organisations begin as the culmination of many factors and as outcome of certain processes within social field. We need to understand these processes very carefully and their role in forming the organisations such as Stree Aadhar Kendra. It is like a river flowing, formed by assimilation and contribution of different streams of different kinds and backgrounds.
Most of SAK's projects are targeted at tackling the issues it has identified for itself. Of these one activity that has been a constant feature of SAK over the last two decades has been Family Counselling. Apart from these SAK takes up projects from time to time to tackle specific issues of women.