About Us: Our Team

Swarnlata Mahilkar

Programme Officer, Adolescent Girls & Gender Initiatives, India

Swarnlata Mahilkar is EMpower's Programme Officer,  Adolescent Girls & Gender Initiatives, India. She manages EMpower’s girl-led initiative, the Adolescent Girls Learning Community in India. Her role involves facilitating participatory processes with adolescent girls and grantee partners to strengthen the gender-focused programmatic innovations from the Adolescent Girls Learning Community (LC) and working closely with the global teams to incubate the LC model in other geographies.

Before EMpower, she worked with CREA, a global feminist human rights organisation, and led its programmes. It’s My Body and SELF Academy with girls and young women to advance SRHR through sports, collectivisation, and leadership building. She is a feminist activist with a decade-long experience working on issues related to Gender Justice, Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights, Feminist Leadership, Women’ Education, Gender-Based Violence, and Women& Girl's Empowerment. She has worked extensively with girls and young women in different contexts and communities through innovative programmes, capacity building and training, knowledge resource development, and implementation.

She has a Master's in Sociology from the Delhi School of Economics and holds a degree in law.

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