Prerna Singh Bindra was honored as an Ashoka ChangemakeHER, Changemakers's inaugural celebration of the world's most influentual and inspiring women. Find her fellow honorees' voices here.
Prerna Singh Bindra is a journalist and lobbyist for conservation. She has consulted with Friends of Women's World Banking to make microfinance more accessible to rural women. She edits the conservation journal Tigerlink and received the Carl Zeiss Award for her work in wildlife conservation.
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Who are your favorite female changemakers from history?
- Rachel Carson’s seminal work Silent Spring helped spark the environmental movement as we know it today. She showed the world what pesticides have poisoned our world—the presence of toxic chemicals in water and on land, in our soil and food, and its impact on other creatures of the earth.
Rachel warned about the presence of DDT in mother’s milk. She faced the wrath of the pesticide industry, but her work resulted in the banning of DDT and enactment of environment regulations.
Rachel Carson showed the world the power of the pen, and what one woman can do—to change the world. - Dr. Jane Goodall, the world’s foremost primatologist and conservationist is my hero. She went into the jungles of Africa (Gombe National Park, Tanzania) to study wild chimpanzees in 1960. Her research and books changed the way we looked at our next of kin. She is courageous, compassionate, and a pioneer in her field.
- All those woman who fight against all the odds to stand up for their rights, such as Bhanwari Devi, who was gang raped by the upper-castes in a village in Rajasthan, India. She risked her life and faced social boycott to fight for justice and bring her rapists to book.
