Apurva is a 25 years passionate lady who is a strong supporter of various social, economic, religious and gender minority rights. She has completed her MA in Politics and Sociology from University of Mumbai. She is working as a Research Coordinator at The QKnit which is an LGBTQAI+ Collaborative. She has received the Kutchina Krritika Fellowship for the year 2018-2019 by Kutchina Foundation, under which she is currently running QueerKala project as a part of The QKnit in order to create employment and livelihood opportunities for various minorities and the backward classes of the society. she has recently started Café Guftagu which is an open and inclusive dialogue café along with two business partners. She is interested in educating the people regarding the issues of women, children, dalits and LGBTQ community as well as trying to find solutions for those issues. She also wants to work for the promotion of education and educational rights for all. 

She has been associated with The QKnit which is an LGBTQIA+ Collective currently working in Mumbai, Delhi and Pune. We seeks to mobilize India’s queer community and the marginalized women through social media and events.

Some of the activities of The QKnit:

  • QueerKatta:

QueerKatta is one of flagship event which QKnit has been hosting since August 2018, QueerKatta is a monthly meetup where we invite people of different backgrounds to any of the public spaces like parks, grounds, promenade, etc. available in Mumbai and facilitate discussion on diverse topics of day to day life. The idea is to create a safe space for all and also to provide a platform to queer community and heterosexual community to interact with eachother.

  • Gender Sensitization Sessions and Workshops:

conduct Gender Sensitisation sessions and workshops at workplaces and educational institutions to facilitate dialogue on gender and sexuality. 

  • Mumbai Pride Month Events:

During January they host open and inclusive events like Youth Festival, Sports Meet, Queer Hugs to advocate about the rights of Queer Community.

  • Blogs on Website and Social Media Campaigns:

QKnit create and publish content in the form of blogs, poetries on our website and social media campaigns regarding various days and issues on our social media handles to aware the masses.

  • QueerKala:

QueerKala is a platform that encourages artists from the LGBTQIA+ (collectively termed “Queer”) community and marginalised women by providing them with tools, techniques, and resources to showcase their talents in the field of arts and craft.  It primarily aims at creating employment and livelihood opportunities for these people by incorporating their work into the mainstream working sector.

  • Café Guftagu:

With the help of Kutchina Krritika Fellowship they have started Café Guftagu, an open and inclusive dialogue café based in Mira Road which we started in February 2020 with an aim to create a non judgemental and safe space for people to be themselves. It is a queer friendly café and we also have employed a queer person at the café.