The bridge that we have built over the last many decades is multi-layered. The base of the bridge is cultural. Cultural work is the bedrock for long-term relationship building, trust, and joy. We have arranged, managed, and facilitated the tours of many artists, nonprofit leaders, filmmakers, and intellectuals through North America. For example, among the transnational cultural movements that we have built or enhanced include the music of folk artists such as
Prahlad Singh Tipanya back in the early 2000s and the films of the renowned documentary filmmaker Anand Patwardhan for almost 3 decades.

Over this base layer of cultural movement, we have encouraged and consolidated relationships between diverse social movements of India. In the early part of this decade, U.S. tours of movement leaders such as Aruna Roy, Shabnam Hashmi, Anand Teltumbde, and Sujatha Surepally, to name just a few, were organized. We have supported the work of marginal communities including Dalits and Adivasis, and worked to popularize the role of giants of social change in India, from Phule to Periyar and Ambedkar in the diaspora.

With this rich history spanning over two decades, we have, in the last two years, developed a unique set of new focus areas in our work. These include:

• The consolidation of Dalit Solidarity Forum, the diaspora’s oldest Dalit rights organization, including some new and exciting work at the intersection of caste and labor.
• The consolidation of two decades of cultural and social movement work, including critical work within diasporic communities, under a new initiative titled Savera, which has created a historic interfaith, cross-caste coalition of community organizations that are fostering understanding and building deep relationships across divides within the diaspora.
• A youth engagement and education project that centers questions of identity and justice in the Indian American diaspora. As another generation of Indian American youth step up to participate in their communities, we are seeking to anchor young people in values of pluralism, equality, and justice.
• A new experimental project that educates youth on how to respond to ecological crisis in India, including disaster preparedness within communities and new pathways for sustainable development. We are seeking to do this project in collaboration with prestigious research institutions in the U.S.