Our main objective is to work towards the eradication of Manual Scavenging as per the law in force in India, namely, “The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavenging and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013”. While covering two districts in Tamil Nadu, Madurai and Virudhunagar, the Madurai Legal Awareness and Coordination Team, is taking a lot of efforts for the implementation of this Act through such field based activities as providing awareness of the law to the workers and to the govt. officials in the local panchayat bodies.

Women’s empowerment is the focus of this Unit. Women from 10 districts in Tamil Nadu (Dindigul, Madurai, Pudukottai, Ramnad, Sivagangai, Virudhunagar, Thirunelveli, Theni, Trichy, Tuticorin) benefit from its training programs on gender rights, legislations on gender violence, techniques to combat violence, leadership skills, etc.

Around 6000 books (3000 in Tamil and in English respectively) in the Library Section, classified under various headings, are made available for students, researchers, social movement cadres, etc. for training and research purposes. One can access from the Documentation Section (i) news items and (ii) articles collected from various Tamil and English newspapers (The Hindu, The Times of India, The New Indian Express, Theekathir, Dinakaran, The Hindu tamil) since 2000. Recently collected e-books and e-documents on social themes are stored digitally. E-documents titled IDEAS AVANAM and MEDIA EDUCATION are emailed to any interested readers. The collection of audio-video materials (short films, documentary films) serves as resource support for the institute’s training programs and group meetings.

TLFR is a collective effort of organising predominantly Arunthathathiyar and Tribal unorganised workers into registered labour unions. At present there are four such unions in Dindigul, Madurai and Virudhunagar districts with members from Kodaikanal, Sattur, Sivakasi, Oddanchathiram, Vaadippatti and Thirumangalam taluks. They are: