Date:
Author: Rasika Sundaram, change-maker helping survivors of violence
Stories were a natural part of my upbringing in India. As children, my sister and I would sit wide-eyed, palms resting on our chins, listening to our elders narrate tales of valour and love; Rama building a bridge of rocks to rescue Sita, Krishna shielding Draupadi from public humiliation. These were stories of people in peril, and of others who showed up for them.
As I grew older, I began hearing a different kind of narrative. Friends whispered about eerie encounters with strangers, inappropriate touching by security guards, and worse. One close friend, who had grown distant for two years, eventually told me she had survived a sexual assault by a former partner and she had sought a secret abortion alone. When I asked why she hadn't gone to the police, she said, "He won't go to jail. He's influential. What if he came back for revenge?"
I didn't need statistics to understand the scale of the problem. Every survivor around me had a story. And not one of them had received meaningful support.
India has built frameworks to respond to gender-based violence like laws, helplines, support centres. But a framework is only as strong as its last mile. In practice, survivors often face fragmented information, inconsistent service quality, and processes that prioritise documentation over care. There is real appetite for change within the system; what's missing is the connective tissue that makes it work for the person in crisis.
I understood this from the outside, and then I understood it from the inside. In 2022, I was sexually assaulted by a close friend. He disregarded my physical and verbal resistance. When I confronted him, what followed was not accountability but psychological manipulation. The mental health professional I turned to for support shamed and blamed me for what had happened. Legal redress felt unimaginable. For months, I fell deeper into a pit of grief. But alongside the grief grew a question I could not silence: Why is the onus on us to seek healing while those who caused harm walk free?
That question became Imaara (meaning strong, capable, firm).
I founded Imaara Survivor Support Foundation in 2023 with one conviction: survivors deserve more than whispered apologies and broken systems. Central to our work is the Imaara Resource App, Chennai's first verified gender-based violence service provider network, currently in development and set to launch this year.
The app is not a directory. It is a lifeline. Built with survivor input at every stage, it connects users to verified legal aid, mental health services, and shelters, with features designed around safety first: an anonymous browsing mode, a quick-exit button, and plans for voice-based interfaces for non-literate survivors. Our goal is to cut the time a survivor spends searching for help to under four hours because in a crisis, every hour matters.
Imaara has given one-on-one trauma support to over 50 survivors and trained more than 1,500 people in safely intervening to de-escalate harassment or violence in schools and institutions in Chennai, Varanasi, Darjeeling, and beyond. Thirty-three survivor narratives are shaping our advocacy for legal and policy reform through our Project Tell-Tale. Every number behind those figures is a person who once had no clear path to support, no safe space to share their voice and truth, and now does.
The systems that fail survivors are not natural disasters. They are design failures, and they can be redesigned. But survivor-led organisations doing this work are chronically under-resourced, under-recognised, and asked to prove their worth in grant cycles while people are in crisis.
If you are an institution, fund survivor-led work, not as a charity, but as infrastructure. If you are a peer, amplify the organisations already doing this. If you are the next generation of leaders, know that your lived experience is not a liability. It is the blueprint.
Survivors are not case studies. We are architects of social justice. The path to support exists. Help us build it.
Rasika Sundaram, 28, is founder and director of Imaara Survivor Support Foundation, a non-governmental organization based in Chennai, India that works to support survivors, prevent gender-based violence, and change systems. She is a UN Women 30 for 2030 Network Member. One Young World Ambassador, and Hauwa Ojeifo Scholar.