SHAKTIThe journey
The journey
The SHAKTI Study began by listening. This is its journey, season by season, from five days of women's diaries to the research, teaching, film and action it went on to shape.
Where it all began
Everything that followed grew from these diaries: SHAKTI informed The GAIA Study, the documentary Third Degree Burnout – A Survivor's Guide and Project reset.
The journey line
Seven seasons, one line
Drawn like the women's own lifelines: one line, read from left to right, rising as listening becomes action.
- 1
Summer 2020
The SHAKTI Study is commissioned
The Virsa Foundation, through its JIVINITI Research and Creative Communications Program, sets out on a qualitative study with low-income Black, Latina and White women. It begins with a review of films, books and papers on food, health and animals.
- 2
Fall 2020
Experts first, then the women's own words
Fifteen people who work where food, health and hardship meet help shape the questions. Then the women keep a five-day online diary, one closed board for each community: 76 recruited, 56 wrote, 42 completed all five days.
Before the diaries - 3
Fall–Winter 2020
Nine conversations, and what the women asked for
Nine women from the diaries take part in one-hour video interviews. Brought together, everything they shared points to what they asked for: baby steps, simplicity, people like me, resilience, community and support for the long haul.
What we learned - 4
Spring 2021
Seeds are sown for GAIA
What these women wrote becomes questions for the whole country: SHAKTI shapes The GAIA Study, which goes on to ask 14,626 Americans about diet, stress, resilience and burnout.
The GAIA Study - 5
Spring 2023
Harvard Plant Futures Challenge Lab
Harvard undergraduates studying food systems transformation work with SHAKTI's material and write to federal policymakers.
Read more - 6
Summer 2023 – Winter 2024
SHAKTI and GAIA inspire a documentary
The women's stories and GAIA's findings become the seeds of the documentary feature Third Degree Burnout – A Survivor's Guide.
- 7
Summer–Fall 2026
Project reset. is launched
Project reset., the film's educational impact campaign, launches at NYC Climate Week, drawing its inspiration from SHAKTI: from five days of diaries to five pathways.
- Nourish
- Restore
- Move
- Connect
- Rebalance
Spring 2023 · Harvard
Harvard Plant Futures Challenge Lab
In Spring 2023, undergraduates in GOV 1318, a Harvard course on food systems transformation, worked with material from The SHAKTI Study. The Virsa Foundation took part as a Mindich Engaged Scholar partner, through the Harvard Challenge Lab and Plant Futures.
The students wrote a letter to the Secretaries of Agriculture and of Health and Human Services and to the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. In their reading, the women's food choices were bound by outside constraints of money and time and by inner ones of identity and habit. They argued that the federal definition of food deserts should be rewritten to recognize the inequity behind unequal access, not only distance; that larger, deeper research on these inequities should be funded; and that farm subsidies favoring meat and dairy over fruits and vegetables should be reviewed. They also asked whether the Dietary Guidelines are practical for households with little choice.
The letter was sent. No response was received.
These conclusions are the students' own, and we present them as theirs. The students are not named here.
Summer–Fall 2026 · Five pathways
From five days of diaries to five pathways
The women of SHAKTI set a food goal, named an obstacle and asked for help. In doing so, they gave a reset. cohort its shape. Nourish starts from the goal most of them already held and the dishes they already love. Restore builds on the breathing, prayer and quiet they reach for, and notices the women who stop eating. Move begins with the walks and hikes they found for themselves. Connect answers the help they asked for most: someone doing it with them. Rebalance works on the obstacle they named most, themselves, by lifting the blame rather than adding a rule.
Six years on, their insights still ring true, and they now stand on firmer ground: reinforced by The GAIA Study, by the experts in the film, and by the wider research and scholarship the documentary draws on. Project reset. now carries what these women began to audiences across the nation and beyond. The women of SHAKTI inspired this journey in more ways than one.