We are a community-driven organization working to support women and girls through education, skill development, awareness programs, and local initiatives. Our focus is simple to listen, to help, and to create real opportunities where they are needed most.
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Rural Women’s Social Education Centre (RUWSEC) is a grassroots women’s organisation in the Chengalpattu district of Tamil Nadu. RUWSEC was founded in 1981 by 13 women. Of the 13 founders, 12 were Dalit women from villages in the area, and one was from Chennai (formerly Madras). The twelve Dalit members from the local villages were: Arasammal, Govindammal, Muniammal, Caries, Kumari, Murugammal, Kamala, Devaki, Yasodha, Kadambadi Ammal, Anjalai and Dhanalakshmi. Sundari Ravindran was the thirteenth member, from Chennai.
The organisation evolved from an adult education programme. Women who came together to form RUWSEC were ‘Dalit’ women who worked as adult educators in, or were associated with a pilot project of the National Adult Education Programme (NAEP) initiated in 1978 and implemented in the Thirukazukundram and Thirupporur Blocks of Chengalpattu district. The adult education program implemented in these Blocks was unique in its application of the radical pedagogy of Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator. In Paulo Freire’s educational philosophy, the term animator (or animateur) refers to the educator who facilitates learners’ critical thinking so that they can understand and challenge the injustices they face. Sundari Ravindran was one of the coordinators of the adult education programme and of the implementation of Freire’s educational method.
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Both as a result of the training and exposure they received from working as adult educators and of their experiences as women who were playing an important role in the community for the first time, the women began to question their oppression as poor, Dalit women. Conflicts on the domestic front, opposition from male leadership in their communities, and other concerns, such as the need to learn more about the many reproductive health issues they faced, led them to meet regularly as a women’s group, along with Sundari Ravindran. These meetings were based on reading and discussing chapters from the book “Our Bodies Ourselves”, published by the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective.
After several months, the group felt that the experience of meeting together as women to address gender issues and issues around reproductive health and rights should be extended to women’s groups in their respective villages. Reproductive health and rights and women’s wellbeing were their main focus. This owed itself to the conviction that had evolved from their personal experiences, that women cannot become successful ‘change agents’ addressing social issues without dealing with the lack of control over their bodies and their lives. They felt powerless in their personal lives and needed to start with it, continuing to address it alongside other social concerns.
Subsequently, the women’s group held meetings and workshops with women from different villages on various dimensions of gender discrimination within a society stratified by caste and class. This phase lasted from 1979 to 1981 and included 18 months of work under the aegis of a newly formed NGO, the Rural Development Society.
During these years, the group came to realise that we needed to undertake sustained activities to enable women to learn about their bodies and to question their discrimination, and decided to constitute itself as a women’s organisation through which to carry out these activities. RUWSEC was thus formed in 1981 to address issues related to women’s wellbeing through women’s empowerment.
RUWSEC’s founders worked on sexual and reproductive health issues when the term SRHR had not yet been coined. RUWSEC did not set up a clinic or provide clinical services in the community. The organisation’s approach was to empower local women to demand government services, particularly reproductive health services.
RUWSEC, from the beginning, stressed the importance of creating knowledge about sexual and reproductive health, which led to the founders becoming educators and trainers on sexual and reproductive health. Despite coming from a disadvantaged background with limited education, RUWSEC’s founders sought and gained knowledge and expertise about a wide range of sexual and reproductive health issues and shared it with the women in their villages. They demonstrated leadership despite facing numerous challenges arising from their families and their community. RUWSEC, as part of its focus on strengthening knowledge, produced numerous creative learning and teaching materials in Tamil.
In the 1990s, at the global level, sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) became a salient issue. At the national and international levels, donors and others recognised RUWSEC’s pioneering work in SRHR. More funding became available for work on SRHR issues. In this context, RUWSEC women discussed the need to establish a women-centred clinic that would provide reproductive health services. The focus was on humane services and on avoiding the negative experiences women face in private or public hospitals/clinics.
By the late 90s, RUWSEC began to play a role beyond local communities. Its knowledge creation activities included conducting research on the sexual and reproductive health of rural Dalit women and disseminating the findings through publications. The founders began providing SRHR training to other NGOs. RUWSEC was represented by local Dalit women at national and international meetings and networked with state, national, and international organisations to conduct collaborative research and advocacy on sexual and reproductive health and rights. By 2000, RUWSEC, in addition to being a local community organisation, had become a resource organisation, conducting programmes at the state level and collaborating with national and international organisations.
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Every contribution counts. Your generosity can light up lives and build a brighter tomorrow for those in need.
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November 12, 2025
Together We Rise
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Every contribution counts. Your generosity can light up lives and build a brighter tomorrow for those in need.
Raised:
Goal:
November 12, 2025
Together We Rise
$32,000
Every contribution counts. Your generosity can light up lives and build a brighter tomorrow for those in need.
Raised:
Goal:
November 12, 2025
Together We Rise
$32,000
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