Raju Behara is a Peer Support Provider, aligned with Safe Access Community Well-being project, a community-led initiative, and a flagship project under Qequal Foundation. I have also been working in the healthcare industry for over seven years now, and hold a Masters in Pharmacology from Osmania University, and a PG Diploma in Health Economics, Financing and Policy from Indian Inst. Of Public Health. They have been involved in hosting queer and trans events, in reverse mentoring leaders, helped to devise gender-neutral dress code in India for a workplace, as the member of a leading pharmaceuticals’ LGBTQIA+ Employee Resource Group. 

I have published articles and poems across several queer anthologies, journals and websites.

I am currently working on a funded social action project, through TheYP foundation’s EQUAL fellowship for Queer leaders, to chronicle missing social histories around workplace, housing and healthcare discrimination, and understand the gaps around implementation of legal entitlements available to queer-trans folks in India.

I have headed AIQA foundation for a tenure of over one year (2020-21), as their National President, during which I have led and organised several intersectional campaigns on disability, sexuality & gender, around TGAM, Pride Month, Disability Awareness Month,. incl. hosting panel discussions, interviews & curating diverse content. “Queer & Quarantine" AIQA`s flagship program to support the queer community, esp queer youth who had to face displacement anxiety and re-learn how to manage, endure or battle traumatic households in the midst of a pandemic.

I have facilitated several poetry sessions on queer themes, wherein we examined the work of poets across the world defying and redefining gender binaries, through several queer collectives and poetry collectives in Bangalore & Delhi (Zero-Budget Poetry, Poetry in the Park, Forverses, QAMI, Nestam, AIQA) that addressed issues of gender & sexuality.

mphrajubehara@gmail.com

@questranged

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