Peace building as a process which involves a wide variety of roles and activities, the goal of which is to create and sustain transformation and the movement toward simplified relationships. Peacemaking roles and activities include educator, advocate, trainer, mediator, guarantor, observer, rehabilitator and developer. Peace building draws on many of these activities and applies them at various stages and levels of conflict.
Barrackpore Avenue Women’s Cultural and Social Welfare Society is a registered women’s organization working for the past eighteen years in the areas of women rights and empowerment mainly through legal awareness, livelihood generation and peace mediation. For the past 10 years the organization has been operating in Kamarhati a large slum in West Bengal, India which is dominated by the minority migrant community crippled with the abuses of illiteracy, poverty and years of unquestioned male dominance ,the women and girl child belonging to this area are denied even their basic rights. Child marriage, polygamy, dowry deaths, denial of education or right to property largely features here.

Strategy :

We are making the community women aware of their basic rights and providing them with base to gain social acceptance and legal guidance or peace mediation support in order to address their traumatic grievances. The main activities are opening and running counseling centers inside police station and within the community. The beneficiaries are adolescence and adults. The expected results are conflict management regarding domestic issues or problems and reducing the number of registered cases in the police stations regarding violence against women. It is strongly felt that there is an urgency to treat the “Saathi” project as an independent separate identity and focus on its immense impact. The targeted beneficiaries are the women and girls of the community who had so long been silent victims due to the lack of awareness and a means to voice their pain.

“She is afraid of stepping into a police station` as instead of considering the policeman a friend it’s the reverse. The project SAATHI also aims to bridge the gap between the community and police, creating the authenticity of the “friendly policeman` . Moreover the already overburdened police have neither the time nor the patience to give her a proper hearing or try to peacefully mediate the matter, resulting in a non-returnable police case that ultimately results in divorce or a bitter legal fight. The project SAATHI aims at conflict resolution at its initial stage so to decrease, address, violence against women.

Results :

• Empowered women and adolescent girls stand up for their legal rights, face social and economic challenges, for a just and peaceful community.
• Women find the platform to jointly voice their concerns & find plausible ways to make positive changes & impact Government policy.
• Increased confidence and self-respect among women to seek justice.
• The police and the community utilize non-violent transformation skills for resolving conflict.

• The Restorative Justice way seeks to establish and implement Restorative Justice (RJ) principles in the areas of gendered violence and sexual offence, to mediate conflicts and heal harm done. To popularize Restorative Justice tc be one of the key activities of the project along with the setting up of Restorative Justice Intervention  Centers (RJIC) in police stations, administrative building and in the communities This will be done by working in close liaison with the two concerned police stations Kamarhati and Beigharia and with the District Protection Officer in the Administrative Building. This is to ensure peaceful resolution of Domestic Violence reunite the families. In Case of non-resolution of some cases they and helped to get legal help.
  The other aspect of the project is the setting up of one Prevention of Sexual Harassment of women at workplaces (Prevention. Prohibition and Redressal) POSH Act, 2013 is a legislative Act in India that seeks to protect women from sexual harassment at the workplaces.
• Mercury phoenix trust :
• Kamarhati, which is our focus area is one of the largest slums of West Bengal with a highly concentrated sprawling population of migrant labourers, daily wage earners and petty traders.
• The sustainability of the Project is as the people of Kamarhati is very poor, they can not afford their daily expense. So to fend for their families these men have been compelled to join the labour contractors who send them to different states for long periods in return of petty sums of remuneration.
• The project seeks to address this very delicate socially deep-rooted issue with care and a grass root approach, keeping the targeted beneficiary’s need for privacy and “behind closed doors” aspect, the project envisages to reach every woman and girl of the concerned community through their fellow community women and girls.
• ICC & PoSH Act :
• Our organization has started working on Prevention of Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition, and Redressal) Act, 2013 (PoSH).  The secretary of our organization, Ms. Camille Johnson is also the external member of the Local Complaint Committee (LCC) at District
• Magistrate (DM) office and Latbagan Police Academy. We have created Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) in esteemed schools like Sacred Heart Day School, Happy Days School and SSP Primary School.
• We are in Belgharia P.S for many years with a high rate of successful cases. We also assist the Protection Officer in this area. Now we want to focus on that in maximum institutions there is no ICC and its formation and there is no awareness as well about this, so as a result, we want to promote this.

Skill development through vocational trainings :

The present Indian society is going through a lot of changes and one of the areas where it is very visible is the job market. The traditional ways of earning livelihood are gradually becoming obsolete. For the people that are backward and, financially poor earning a livelihood is becoming more and more difficult. The good quality jobs are linked with higher education. The socially backward people cannot access it and, this is where the interventions regarding skill development plays an important role.
Now the skill development vocational courses being run by the organization for the socially back ward people are : Beautician, Tailoring & Embroidery, bag making, bed side nursing and Computer Education with spoken English & Retail Management. After the training the beneficiaries are helped with placement support, market linkages , loans and entrepreneurship guidance. The objective is to ensure financial independence to the beneficiaries .