For women like me, what is #MeToo? Poverty and stigma mean we can never speak out. There is no place safe for women like us.

 

- A domestic worker affiliated with the Martha Farrell Foundation quoted by Human Rights Watch

The Programme

MFF’s Empowering women domestic workers programme (MainBhi) with women domestic workers is rooted in a long-term community engagement model that integrates social empowerment with economic strengthening. Rather than addressing violence only through awareness campaigns, the programme builds women’s agency, collective power and livelihood resilience simultaneously. This programme is currently being implemented across Delhi-NCR and Haryana, reaching women domestic workers living and working in high-migration, high-vulnerability urban settlements.

The programme combines social empowerment with economic strengthening through a community-led leadership model known as the Pehelkar Model. Rather than focusing only on awareness-raising, the programme builds women's agency, collective leadership, access to justice, institutional accountability, and livelihood resilience. Pehelkars (women community leaders) emerging from the communities themselves, support survivors, facilitate access to legal and welfare services, mentor other women, and engage with government institutions to strengthen accountability.

Over the last decade, the programme has evolved from generating evidence on workplace safety to building community leadership and influencing systems change through holding Government institutions accountable. Through participatory research, engagement with Local Committees, partnership with unions, CSOs and unions, campaigns, policy advocacy, and leadership development, MFF has demonstrated that sustainable change requires strengthening individual agency, collective action, institutional responsiveness, and policy reform simultaneously.