Sahodari Foundation to host a talk on gender and climate change in Coimbatore

Transwoman Karthiga ran a tea stall at Washermanpet in Chennai. Life was good — she managed it efficiently, and lastly felt like she had achieved one thing. But it was throughout in a minute. The floods struck the town in 2015, washing away her store, taking with it the whole lot she struggled to construct over years. “I am still struggling,” she says. A pure catastrophe, be it a man-made one or the results of climate change, impacts individuals from each strata, however it’s the marginalised who’re most affected. This contains individuals from the LGBTQ+ neighborhood.

The Sahodari Foundation, a corporation concerned in transgender rights advocacy, hopes to kickstart a dialog on this subject, particularly on how climate change impacts transgender individuals. Kalki Subramaniam, the founding father of Sahodari, will probably be presenting a panel dialogue on the subject in the town, in which transwomen Sowndharya Gopi and Karthiga are set to take part.

“Climate change and gender are interrelated,” says Kalki. “Excessive rains or floods triggered by climate change, for instance, tend to wash away slums near waterbodies, and many transgender people live in such settlements.” This sends their lives in a downward spiral. “For, individuals from the neighborhood battle to discover homes for hire. Since a lot of them drop out of faculty owing to stigma from society, they find yourself doing odd jobs, and some proceed doing intercourse work and begging,” she adds. During calamities, if they have the need to visit a hospital, there is discrimination there too. “They are rendered homeless and jobless overnight,” points out Kalki.

Chennai-based Sowndharya, for instance, remembers surviving for two says inside her flooded Housing Board apartment during the 2015 floods. “So many transwomen I know went through a nightmarish time without access to toilets and food,” she says. At the discussion, she will be talking about her experiences. “I will share the lessons I learned during the pandemic too,” she says, adding how the first six months of 2020 was especially hard, since she is a folk dancer and all events being canceled. “But I hopped on my two-wheeler to distribute food packets to those in need, with funds from friends on social media,” she adds.

At the panel discussion, Kalki will be presenting solutions as well. “While creating policies and sustainable solutions for climate change, the Government can involve our community as volunteers. We are happy to work with it as messengers of the people,” she says. “This won’t simply assist the transgender neighborhood, however planet Earth as effectively.”

The dialogue Gender and Climate Change is on at Ardhra Hall, Gopalapuram, at 10am on September 24. For particulars, name 7639741916.