Vandita Morarka
Hello! I am Vandita Morarka (she/they), a leading queer feminist voice on social justice and human rights globally, from India, holding expertise as a lawyer, entrepreneur, and policy advocate.
I found CIVICUS when I was starting my organisation at the age of 23, through their Diversity and Inclusion Action Group (DIGNA). It provided me a chance to network, learn with and contribute to a global network of rights-based leaders. From there, I went on to serve on the board of CIVICUS (2020-2023), contributing to its overall policies, strategy and growth. For me, my tenure on the board and other experiences with CIVICUS have been a period of personal fulfilment and professional alignment, allowing me to contribute my expertise to an organisation that is doing incredible work in leading the fight against repression of civic space and freedoms. I have grown up in my political life with CIVICUS and it has enabled my commitment to building an ecosystem within which individual and group rights are not only protected but that they thrive. I hope that an opportunity to serve another term, after opting for a break to commit time towards the issue locally, will help me bring in additional grassroots context and knowledge of the issue to the board and contribute towards an organisation that I respect and see as immensely important to ensuring a world where human rights are upheld.
Outside of CIVICUS, I am the CEO of One Future Collective (https://www.onefuturecollective.org/), which I founded in 2017, motivated by a belief in the power of healing justice, community leadership, and fair institutions towards advancing social justice. At One Future Collective, I lead strategy, business development and fundraising, and programming and impact. My work has involved traversing the fields of political consulting, strategic philanthropy, policy-legal research and advocacy, as well as human rights strategic litigation. My work has enabled direct support for over 50,000+ survivors of sexual and gender-based violence, nurturing leadership capacities in over 2 lakh intergenerational feminists and accompanying more than 350 institutions towards becoming more just and equitable, including as a lawyer, political consultant and unionist. Models underpinning my work have been developed as research and case studies to support the work of other organisations.
I hold a MA Development Studies as a Chevening Scholar from the Institute of Development Studies, MA Hons Public Policy from University of Mumbai, LL.B. from Government Law College, and a BA Hons Economics and Political Science from Sophia College, alongside other qualifications. I am a fellow with Acumen, Change.org, WomenLift Health, GP Birla, Swedish Institute, amongst others. I currently serve as an advisor to the Pleasure Project and as a trustee at Internet Freedom Foundation. I am invested in relationship building and bringing together networks and people to move us forward, together.
I believe strongly that there is no revolution without joy, some tears, and, most importantly, friendship across differences.
- What is your favourite quote by someone who inspires you?
“Hope is a discipline”; by Mariame Kaba
- What skills are you most proud of or want to learn?
I love that I have an analytical mind combined with high emotional intelligence. Given the state of the world and the isolation of social media algorithms, I am looking to learn more about how we can sustain relationships across political differences.
- What is your vision for civil society?
I envision a civil society that is united across its differences, agile and adaptive to technological changes and amply resourced to lead change.
- What lesson(s) have you learnt from failure?
The single most important lesson I have learnt from failure is mental resilience: because bouncing back is so much more important than never starting at all
