History

15 women and one man from Odisha participated in the 4th world conference on women held at Beijing in 1995 .The Advisor from Odisha Ms Pramila Swain had in the preparatory phase had involved women from the different parts of Orissa through several workshops and meetings in order to reach the needs and concerns of women to the national level and also to The international level .After the Beijing conference the team started sharing their experiences and the outcomes of the conference in the state and formed a group called the Odisha Lobby Team ,In December 1995 they also organized the Eastern region Sharing seminar on Beijing taking Seven eastern states of India .The decision to continue to work together and lobby for the commitments to be implemented propelled the group to expand and strengthen themselves taking in more women and organizations .In August 1996 NAWO Odisha chapter was formally formed. 15 core group members from the different districts were nominated /selected to take responsibility of two to three districts each .Nawo Odisha also decided to focus on 4 critical areas of concern viz: Poverty and livelihood issues of women, Political empowerment of women, Human Rights Violence against women and Health issues of women and girls. NAWO functioned as a network building its membership base in all district of Orissa .As of March 2011 NAWO Odisha has 103 Organizational members and 120 individual members .NAWO opened membership to individual activists, Professionals, grass root women, SHG group, women’s organizations etc .The Uniqueness of NAWO is that it is an alliance of all women’s organizations who work at the grass root level. 1996 – 2003 : NAWO Odisha had no office space but functioned from different organizations depending on the issues being taken up and advocacy agenda’s .In 2000, during the world march of women , NAWO with a meager support of Rs 45000 was able to raise more 11lakhs and carry out the campaign on Poverty and violence against women in the districts of Orissa ,it organized 16 district level meetings on the issues and it was in these meetings that there was a demand to have an office space set up as resource center for women ,as the state lacked it .This was made possible when Ms Rukmini Rao who referred NAWO Odisha’ chapter’s name to TROCAIRE an Irish Funding agency who then came forward to support the resource center and the lobbying and advocacy actions of NAWO . NAWO Odisha works through its 15 district resource centers that are housed in the member organizations in the different districts of Odisha .All our campaign activities and studies and information sharing and capacity building work is done through the DRCs .Though NAWO has 14 DRCs but has members all over the state.