Bhubaneswar: For the proud Odias, another good news to cheer about on the International Women’s Day today!
Temple City-born Odia woman Sarika Panda Bhatt has been named as a “Remarkable Women in Transport” from around the world by Transformative Urban Mobility Initiative (TUMI), Germany.
TUMI is the leading global implementation initiative on sustainable mobility formed through the union of 11 prestigious partners and is based out of Germany. TUMI supports transport projects all around the world and enables policy makers to transform urban mobility. We believe in sustainable mobility for a better future.
To make the daily work of women who transform urban mobility more visible, TUMI will publish the first TUMI Remarkable Women in Transport Publication, presenting highly qualified women transport experts. The report will be on 8th March 2019 – just in time for the International Women’s Day 2019!
Sarika is one of 60 most ‘Remarkable Women in Transport’ and was selected from a global search. She was selected for her work in promoting walking and cycling in cities as she is a co-founder of Raahgiri Day, an open streets movement that started from Gurugram and has now grown to over 70 locations in the country. She is also the director of Vision Zero program that looks to address road safety issues, especially those of pedestrian and cyclist. She has been part of and crated multiple other campaigns like Car Free Challenge, Pedal to Work challenge etc all around using sustainable transportation.
It would be pertinent to mention here that Sarika was instrumental in introducing Raahgiri as the Sunday street festival in the city by the Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA) and Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation on January 17, 2016. However, later Raahgiri was renamed as Patha Utsav by the city authorities and it has completed more than 80 episodes after the re-naming was done.
Sarika is an architect and urban planner. She has over 15 years of experience in working on non-motorized transport projects, road safety, citizen engagement and urban planning. She is currently head of transport and road safety at World Resource Institute (WRI) India and Co-Founder of The Raahgiri Foundation. She lives with her family in Gurugram.
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