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Mumbai-based, Men Against Violence and Abuse (MAVA) is India's first voluntary organisation run by men. MAVA promotes women's empowerment and gender equality by engaging and mentoring young men to stop and prevent gender-based violence against women. MAVA primarily engages young men in schools, colleges, and targeted communities in conversations around sexual health, relationships, and preventing violence against women through leadership-driven training. MAVAs objective is to promote positive models of masculinity that empowers men and women to improve their quality of life.

Their main activities are:

• Gender Sensitisation Programs: MAVA conducts gender sensitisation and capacity-building workshop sessions in colleges/universities, and for government and voluntary organisations. MAVA also conducts residential programs for student-leaders to advocate against gender discrimination and sexual harassment of girls in public places amongst students in Mumbai.
• Project ‘Yuva Tarang’: As part of the project,  2-day Workshops on Gender-Sensitization are organized and a Residential Camp of 4-days are held for male students. These camps are arranged to develop an in depth perspective on gender among the potential student leaders with whom they would have long-term interventions.
• Annual Magazine Project: MAVA’s annual magazine in Marathi, ‘PurushSpandana’ (meaning men’s expressions), contains short stories, interviews, articles, etc. on sentiments of men. This magazine attempts to provide a platform exclusively for men of varied age-groups and backgrounds, to spontaneously express their innermost thoughts and various gender-related contemporary issues. The 2015 issue received the ‘Best Magazine’ Prize from a literary body.
• Umang Project: MAVA’s pilot project called ‘Umang’ works with adolescent boys between 13-17 years of age, on issues related to gender bias and sexuality. Supported by the US Consulate-Mumbai, weekly gender sensitization sessions are held. A 3-day summer camp was held at YMCA Campsite, Lonavala for boys from 3 disadvantaged communities of Mumbai.
• Special Awareness Campaigns: On the occasion of Global Protest Fortnight on Violence Against Women, MAVA ran a 16-day mass campaign advocating against gender-discrimination and sexual harassment of girls/women among the youth. 30 shows of a street-play on the theme Redefining Masculinity titled ‘Mardangi’ in Hindi was performed for hospitals, community centers, railway stations, Kalaghoda festival and FICCI Film Festival.