September 12th 2007
Jesus and Mary College

As part of the curriculum the department of psychology of Jesus and Mary College organized the screening of the movie ‘Summer In My Veins’ under the banner – ‘Recollections Of A Filmmaker’. This was followed by an interactive session between the teachers and the students. Mina will be attending a workshop in the near future to give impetus to furthering the discussion.

July 7th 2007
‘NDTV Hindi’

Mina was interviewed by NDTV for the ‘Salaam Zindagi’ show. The show was part of an initiative to talk to family members of gays and gauge the kind of support and bias that is prevalent. This show was broadcast on 22nd of September 2007.

May 7th 2007
Contribution by ‘JWT’

‘JWT’ the leading advertizing company in India was responsible for giving us three computers to boost our infrastructure. This allowed us to give much more hands-on time to students so starved for practice at the system. We thank them for this and hope we can convince them through our work to continue with such support in the future.

March 7th to 10th 2007
Films of Desire.-(‘CREA’)

Founded in 2000, ‘CREA’ is one of the few women-led not-for-profit organizations based in India working on human rights at the local, national, regional and international levels.

CREA organized a film festival ‘Films of Desire: sexuality and the cinematic imagination’ at Neemrana Fort Palace where they held screenings of features, short films, documentaries, animation, music videos and experimental films that engage with ideas of sexuality in south and south-east Asia; the idea was to expand the resource pool of people who work on issues of sexuality, rights and representation in south and south-east Asia.

‘Summer In My Veins’ by Nishit Saran was also screened. Mina was part of this screening and was a panelist in a Q & A session after the movie. Her answers were well- received and encouraged us at the foundation to endeavour to be more proactive in our support to those parents caught in the meshes of their societal conditioning and love for their children who are gay.

January 1st, 2007
School started in Noida

‘Next Step’ our school for teaching English and computers made a modest beginning. The builder of the complex where the trustees reside provided them with a large room as an interim arrangement to initiate their efforts. The number of students and the infrastructure has grown piecemeal. Besides the two areas of focus Raj has also been helping his students with subjects like mathematics.

In this special edition of ‘We The People’ an immensely popular talk show hosted by Barkha Dutt on NDTV the debate was as to whether India was ready to accept homosexuality as legal and do away with the draconian law under section 377 of the Indian penal code. Among the panelists were the renowned constitutional expert Soli Sorabjee. Mina was one of the five panelists.

August 27th, 2006 6:30pm
India Habitat Centre

Youth Parliament and the Nishit Saran Foundation screened ‘Summer In My Veins’, followed by a discussion on sexuality by Gautam Bhan of the ‘Nigah Media Collective’.