Nirmala Vasave is a young Adivasi woman hailing from the Adivasi belt of Akkalkuva block of Nandurbar District. Nandurbar is located in North eastern part of Maharashtra. She comes from this schedule tribe belt which is infamous in India for high level of illiteracy, malnutrition and high child mortality rate. It says that in every monsoon thousands of children faces malnutrition problems across this tribal-dominated belt. Despite facing this reality, Nirmala studied hard and did M.A., B.Ed, M.Ed. She became one of the interns of Center for Youth Development Activities in 2008-9. This boost her motivation to plunge into social issues of Tribal Community. She later on did her Masters in Social work and worked with fee Organisations on the issues of Health and Community Development. She also worked under a Govt. project -Tarang on HIV / AIDS awareness program.
Nirmala came in touch with Manuski in 2012 and became one of the members of “Adarsha Fellowship” (2014 – 2016) which was meant to develop Leadership program of women coming from the oppressed and discriminated background and bear the thrust to work for their community issues in their native place. Manuski encouraged her to deal with Tribal community issues. She built up Rapport with the community, did survey on socio – economic aspects, built a network of women groups, youth groups, tackled marginalized farmers issues, created awareness and encouraged village people to participate in Gram sabhas to share their issues to Panchayats and Govt. bodies. While working with Mansuki, she tried to give alterative options to create rural livelihood by holding workshops on generating employment opportunities through different Govt. schemes and policies. She did effective interventions with Gram panchayat bodies, Govt. depts. & elected members on livelihood and employment creation. She managed to hold exposure visit of Manuski’s fellows and network people to learn and share issues of Adivasi people. She also arranged health camps, Employment generation fair, awareness camps with Adivasi women and youths on government schemes. Seeing her commitment, the irrigation department of Nandurbar District appointed Nirmala as a coordinator member in Govt. office and Pratham Orgnisation awarded her a title as “Rojgar Mitra i.e. Employment Friend”.
Nirmala was one of the participants of Manuski’s capacity building program and attained training in Right to information Act, Prevention of Atrocities act to tackle the human rights issues. Inspired with these inputs received from Manuski she registered her own Organisation “Nirmal Adivasi Charitable Trust” in 2016.
Nirmala says “Through Manuski’s women leadership development program, I gained lot of strength and confidence to do social work for my community. I also received constant encouragement and moral support from Manuski staff and therefore today I am heading my own organization for the benefit of community”
