A gender-equal world cannot be imagined without the actions of young people. Their ability to question, to dream and to rebuild the world around them makes them central to any movement for gender equality and environmental justice.
Gender inequality is a pervasive reality that shapes lives across the world — and Assam is no exception. Communities remain deeply patriarchal, and the consequences are measurable: NFHS-5 data (2019–21) shows that 32.9% of rural women aged 18–49 in Assam have faced spousal violence. Gender inequalities increase the risk of violence against women and girls, and hinder the ability of those affected to seek support. Violence, in many forms, continues to be used as a tool of social control, to maintain power, reinforce gender stereotypes and silence those who challenge them.
At North East Network (NEN), we believe that to build an equal society, honest dialogue between people across genders is essential to understand how constructed gender roles harm everyone.
It was from this conviction, and from years of work across rural Assam, that the Mirdan Youth Collective was born.
Who Is the Mirdan Youth Collective?
Beginning in 2018, NEN initiated regular gender sessions and workshops with young people from different villages and communities — spaces where youth sat together, shared lived experiences, questioned long-held beliefs and began to understand how deeply gender norms shape their lives. Slowly, those tentative conversations grew into confident voices, and those voices began to imagine new possibilities for themselves and their communities.
From this emerged the Mirdan Youth Collective.
Mirdan Youth Collective is a circle of around 100 young people from six districts of Assam, each bringing their curiosity, creativity and commitment to a shared vision of a just and peaceful society.
The name Mirdan means orchids in Karbi, representing the diversity of orchids in their many forms and colours, just like the young people of the collective. The collective was formally established in 2022.
What Do They Do?
Recognising the immense capacities and possibilities of young people to be active catalysts for social change, the Collective works across two interlocking fronts.
Through creative mediums and sports; zines, puppetry, street plays, dance dramas, music, art, poetry and frisbee, they bring people together, open dialogue and nurture spaces where ideas of equality and justice can take root. A story told in a courtyard, a play performed in a marketplace, a game on an open field: each is an entry point into conversations that matter.
But their work does not end with performance or art.
The youth regularly organise local-level initiatives, hold community dialogues and facilitate conversations on gender-based discrimination, violence against women and girls, agro-ecology and climate change. They have motivated peers from their own communities to join the larger movement to end all forms of discrimination.
What the Collective Represents
The Mirdan Youth Collective stands today as a testament to what emerges when young people are seen not as beneficiaries, but as partners and co-creators of change. Their journey reflects NEN’s long-held belief in strengthening community leadership through reflection, creativity and feminist solidarity.
