Thanks to the Aman National network members for participating in the 16th annual meeting held in Hyderabad
Aman Network
Dear Friends,
Greetings from Aman National Network Secretariat!
Hope you all had a safe return from Hyderabad. We want to express our gratitude to all the members present in Hyderabad for making the 16th annual meeting of the Aman National Network a resounding success. A total of 63 members from 30 organisations across 12 states participated in the meeting. We also want to extend our thanks to the National Working Committee members for their unwavering support in designing and facilitating the meeting.
A special thanks to Usha Rani ji and the entire Sannihita volunteer team for hosting the meeting and ensuring our stay and communication were smooth at the MSI. All members were overwhelmed by your team’s hospitality and support, especially given the heavy rain and flooding in the city. We also extend our gratitude to the local organisation My Choice Foundation, Hyderabad, for assisting us in exploring potential venues for the meeting and planning sightseeing activities for our members.
During the meeting, we outlined several follow-up activities that we promised to address immediately. Please let me know if I've missed anything:
· An online meeting is scheduled on the 16th of October (tentative) with all the National Working Committee members to review the committee’s functioning, discuss the transition of a few old members, and the enrolment of new members to the committee.
· The website thematic team circulated a Google Sheet to collect contact information from members who are willing to upload their service details on the website. So far, they have received only 45 responses. The team will resend the sheet, encouraging those members who have not yet submitted their information to do so by the end of October.
· Present State secretariat organisations were requested to share the State member list by the end of October to add to the National contact list.
· The thematic groups are being restructured as many new members have expressed their interest and commitment to join. A request has been made to identify one or two focal persons to manage the activities and communications within these thematic teams. Members are kindly requested to dedicate their time to the group upon joining.
· The existing thematic teams—Research and Advocacy, Capacity Building, and Website—were requested to add new members by the end of October to initiate communication about planned activities.
· The Capacity Building thematic group will prepare a six-month calendar of sessions to share with the network by mid-November. A few session topics were suggested for immediate attention, such as ‘Service data ethics’, ‘Technology Facilitated Gender Based Violence’, with a request to organise these online sessions before the 16 days awareness drive.
· A discussion took place to mark the completion of 20 years of the PWDVA, 2005, this year. It was decided that soon after the annual meeting of Aman in Hyderabad, all State secretariats will organise a meeting with State network members. The purpose of this meeting is to discuss and plan a day programme during the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, to mark the 20th anniversary of Act. 6th December was decided as a common date to organise this program by all State members of the Aman Network. The focus of the programme can be on highlighting the shortcomings/challenges in the implementation of the Act. This includes issues such as the challenges in filing cases of violence from the natal family, delays in the domestic violence trial process, delays in court proceedings, delays in obtaining court orders, and the difficulties faced by survivors in accessing assistance from the DLSA. The State can decide to mark the day in the form of a rally, a press conference, or an awareness program. Next year, the network will have a big event (to be brainstormed) marking 20 years of the implementation of the law.
· A meeting is proposed between the National Working Committee and the State Secretariat. The objectives of this meeting are to review their roles, discuss the challenges they face in running the secretariat, and identify any additional support the State Secretariat may need. Additionally, the meeting will focus on planning State-level activities under the banner of Aman. The meeting is scheduled for the beginning of November.
· The organisations that hold the State secretariats are requested to organise a meeting with State members after their discussion with the National secretariat. This will allow them to share their operational methods and transfer the secretariat responsibility if another organisation is willing to take on that responsibility. Additionally, a suggestion was made to resend an SOP for the functioning of the State level secretariats.
· A productive discussion was held regarding natal family violence and the planning of advocacy efforts on this issue. It was suggested that a collection of case studies on natal family violence be compiled and documented as evidence. This approach can provide focused, data-driven information to advocate for issues related to natal family violence with duty bearers. This will be discussed within the research team to work out a plan of action.
· In last year's meeting in Patna, the CEHAT team presented an analysis of the case intake forms from 11 organisations. During the meeting in Hyderabad, they introduced a consolidated and comprehensive intake form as a model. This form is designed to collect and organise data effectively, allowing for potential analysis and use for advocacy purposes.
· The research thematic team will meet online by mid November to discuss and plan a short study and a campaign to mark the 20 years of the PWDVA 2005 in December 2026, and a one-year activity plan.
· During the Hyderabad meeting, the following points were discussed within the Research team:
o CEHAT team will share the draft of the key intake indicators; organisations will be called to share their suggestions on the categories.
o Organisations will also be asked to communicate their willingness to participate in data collection on certain key indicators on DV data and the implementation of PWDVA Act. Hence, a small study could be done and info sheets could be released and shared with the multiple stakeholders.
o Data will be anonymised and collected in real time and retrospective data will also have to be shared. The research team will share the details in due time.
o Organisations will also have to state their engagement with key stakeholders - police, POs, public health institutions etc, and participate in developing data collection tools (as follow-up sheets) specific to that stakeholder.
o Data collection (real-time and retrospective) will be done between January- June 2026. Research team will discuss the process in more detail by end of November 2025.
A detailed minutes of the meeting will be shared soon. I kindly request the members who took minutes during the meeting to share them as soon as possible, so we can finalise the report and distribute it to all members.
Warm Regards,
Seema and Amrita
(on behalf of the Aman National Network Secretariat)