Are South Asian youth comfortable sharing their dating experiences with their parents? Do they receive enough guidance and support from their families in understanding the concept of healthy partner relationships? To discuss these questions we invited 3 South Asian youth community members. Hajra Usman, Sid Barathi, and Nidhi Satyagal joined us to shed light on the unique challenges South Asian youth face when navigating conversations about dating and relationships with their families. They also shared their recommendations on how both South Asian youth and adults can facilitate an environment ..read more

Female genital cutting/ mutilation has been recognized as a human rights violation by the World Health Organization. This topic is highly controversial due to its roots in cultural and religious practices so we should have multiple conversations to have community awareness around it. To discuss how we can end this oppressive practice and bring positive social change, we invited Mariya Taher, the co-founder and U.S. Executive Director of Sahiyo. Listen to this episode here! Visit: https://sahiyo.org/ This project was made possible by funding provided by the County of Santa Clara Office of Gende ..read more

Mariam Azimi, a survivor with her courage and resilience not only paved her future with safety and dignity, but also gave support, guidance, and emotional confidence to many survivors that they needed after suffering from domestic violence. Mariam has been working relentlessly to break the stigma of divorce. In this Maitri podcast episode, Mariam shares her journey and hope. Mariam Azimi is the founder of Care2Elevate.space and established CircleofsiSTARhood (https://www.facebook.com/circleofsiSTARhood/about_details.) --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/maitri ..read more

We invited Yasmin Azad, the author of Stay, Daughter on our podcast to talk about her experience and reflection on the dilemmas that Muslim women faced and are facing in balancing the rules of orthodox Islam with the freedom and innovations of the modern world. Fahria Khan, our Donor Engagement Manage had an in-depth conversation with the author. Please listen to the episode here! Yasmin Azad grew up in Sri Lanka and was among the first group of girls in her Muslim community to go away from home to pursue a university degree. After obtaining a B.A. in English, she married and moved t ..read more

In this episode, Flavia Agnes joined us to share her journey from a survivor to a trailblazer. Flavia Agnes is a women’s rights advocate, legal scholar, and one of the central figures of the women’s movement in India. Her own experience with domestic violence inspired her to become a women's rights lawyer. As co-founder of MAJLIS, a legal and cultural resource center in Mumbai, India, her primary engagement has been to provide quality legal services to women and children. **About Flavia Agnes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavia_Agnes **About Majlis: https://majlislaw.com/about/ Learn about ..read more

In this episode we discussed inter-generational cultural conflicts that many South Asian parents and teens face. Three South Asian teens, Tara Sardana, Alina Shah and Kaushal Namuduri shared their thoughts on how this cultural conflict can be damaging for individual, family and community well-being. If you are a parent or a teen, then you must listen to this episode to learn what can be done to reduce and end intergenerational cultural conflict. Please share this episode with your network. Feel free to share your recommendations with us at maitri@maitri.org. This project was made possible by ..read more

We invited Yasmin Azad, the author of Stay, Daughter on our podcast to talk about her experience and reflection on the dilemmas that Muslim women faced and are facing in balancing the rules of orthodox Islam with the freedom and innovations of the modern world. Fahria Khan, our Donor Engagement Manage had an in-depth conversation with the author. Please listen to the episode here! Yasmin Azad grew up in Sri Lanka and was among the first group of girls in her Muslim community to go away from home to pursue a university degree. After obtaining a B.A. in English, she married and moved t ..read more

Did you know that between 2000 and 2018, an astonishing 23,588 children were married in California alone? This sparks the question as to why it continues and who opposes the reform initiatives. In 2023, SB404 was introduced by lawmakers to prohibit marriages before the age of 18; however, it was changed to only make it a misdemeanor to arrange non-legally recognized child marriages without actually ending child marriages in California. Passing the Senate, SB404 awaits a vote in the Assembly Committee on Public Safety. In this podcast, the founder of Unchained At Last (www.unchainedatlast.org ..read more

Marital rape has been a crime in all 50 States in the US since 1993. The current California criminal code makes no distinction between rape by a stranger and an intimate partner or spouse. The non-consensual sexual relations within a marriage are subject to the same penalty and consequences resulting in registration in the sex offenders’ list among others. As an agency primarily serving immigrant survivors from South Asia, it has posed and continues to pose a unique challenge for Maitri in communicating with survivors and delivering a message of no tolerance to sexual violence within a marriag ..read more

While men have always played an important role in shaping public policies and community awareness in many areas, domestic violence prevention often remains ignored within this group. How do we engage South Asian men in the movement? Maitri's long time advocate Zakia Afrin sits down with S Suresh, a past member of Maitri leadership and outgoing Board member in the Statewide organization CPEDV to discuss men in the DV prevention movement, his passion for social justice and writing novels in Tamil. Please help us improve our podcast by taking this quick survey: https://shorturl.at/puBGJ This pr ..read more