About INDERA
Well being
is our Foundation
© Studio Livingness
INDERA is a non-profit organization working internationally for gender equality and women’s human rights worldwide. Founded in 2007, INDERA has been raising awareness and delivering projects that inspire a much needed paradigm shift.
INDERA envisions a world where everybody is provided with the resources and opportunities to live and express the qualities of love, tenderness, nurturing, sensitivity, awareness and strength that are natural to us all, regardless of gender.
INDERA aims to empower people of all ages, professions and backgrounds to embrace their power within. We understand that simple daily choices can have a big impact, both personally and globally, to shift patterns of abuse, ill-health and inequality. This makes way for empowerment, harmony and true wellbeing to become our everyday experience.
© IStock
© Iris Pohl
WE EDUCATE
INDERA offers educational programs for young people and professional training to a diverse range of ages and professions including teachers, youth professionals, parents, policy makers, media, as well as companies and public institutions.
We educate on the power of role modelling, in the understanding that meaningful change can only occur if we live by example. If we are honest, many of the issues that our younger generations face are equally prevalent throughout society. It is important that we set standards of love, decency and respect across all facets of life, to empower young people with the awareness and confidence to make the same choices in their own lives.
WE RAISE AWARENESS & ADVOCATE FOR POLITICAL CHANGE
At INDERA, it is our experience that true change is possible, but that it can only be achieved when the outer world and the inner world are given equal focus. In the global struggle for equality, advocacy often focuses on the oppressive laws, regimes, cultural attitudes and discriminations and attempts to bring reform and change to these outer structures.
While this is fundamentally important, even in countries that have made great shifts towards gender equality, the statistics of domestic violence, crime, illness and disease, self-harm, exhaustion, stress and drug and alcohol abuse clearly show that changing the outer structures is not the whole and complete answer.
We all have a natural essence within us that is loving, respectful, wise and powerful. For true change to occur, we need to support all women and men to reconnect to this natural essence within, and free themselves of the impositions and expectations that suffocate this otherwise natural expression. Upon this foundation, laws, policies and social structures can be developed that support the inner essence of all people to flourish equally.
With this understanding, INDERA raises awareness about the fact that advocating for women’s human rights and gender equality has two vital aspects:
• The promotion of normative frameworks, therefore rights, which give place to a range of legal entitlements.
• The absolute responsibility and integrity each individual lives in and therefore the quality we contribute to the whole.
In our work we are…
-
Bringing attention to the fact that our inner quality is a powerful source to impulse true change and that we are not at the mercy of outer conditioning.
-
Offering a platform for both men and women to build body awareness and a deeper respect for themselves and their bodies, so they are free to set new standards in their lives.
-
Supporting people to develop self-love, self-care and self-responsibility, providing the foundation for true wellbeing.
-
Collectively advocating for a way of life that does not seek to improve the corrupt and unacceptable status quo, but establishes a way of being that is based on the inner qualities of harmony, equanimity and love that are equally within us all.
"Many of the ill-beings faced today are manifested in the young and we are worried and want to educate them, but in truth we all have to re-learn how to live from decency, respect and love."
WE NETWORK & COLLABORATE AT AN INTERNATIONAL LEVEL
Through partnerships and networking we bring together different skills, resources and stakeholders with the aim to not only solve problems, but to uncover the root causes of the issues we observe in society today.
This allows us to understand and address deeply entrenched problems that individual organizations, or even whole sectors, are not able to tackle on their own. For this reason we work locally, nationally and internationally with multi-sector partnerships including businesses, governments, NGOs and other community-based groups. These inter-institutional exchange processes bring to light a deeper understanding of our collective responsibility and how each of us play a crucial role in the quality of the world we are creating.
WE DEVELOP RESOURCES & CONDUCT RESEARCH.
We develop educational materials, resources and conduct research to strengthen the capabilities of people and institutions. We support people to understand that the key to establishing a truly caring society is to reconnect to the intelligence of the body.
Most educational material today is focused on advancing and educating the mind, through the misconception that intelligence is only in the human brain. Yet history has shown us that educating the mind does not necessarily lead people to make choices that are loving to their bodies. The focus of developing the mind as the one and only intelligence, inadvertently teaches people to disregard and disconnect from their bodies, making the acceptance of abuse and self-abusive behaviours possible. The facts that highly educated people smoke cigarettes, abuse alcohol, are bullying and dismissing of others are just a few examples.
At INDERA we aim to bring the body back into the equation. When we educate body awareness, principles such as decency, respect and love are reintroduced through the practice of self-love, self-care and self-responsibility. This empowers people to reconnect to the whole body intelligence that is naturally available to us all.
© Studio Livingness
@ Iris Pohl