Shreegauri Sawant aka Gauri Sawant is a transgender activist from Mumbai, India. She is the director of Sakhi Char Chowghi that helps transgender people and people with HIV/AIDS. She was featured in an ad by Vicks. She was made the goodwill ambassador of Election Commission in Maharashtra.
Sawant was born as Ganesh and raised in Pune. Her mother died when she was seven years old and she was raised by her grandmother. Her father is a police officer. She left her house at the age of 14 or 15 as she didn’t want to be a disappointment for her dad.
Gauri founded the Sakhi Char Chowghi Trust in 2000. The NGO promotes safe sex and provides counselling to transgender people. In 2014, she became the first transgender person to file a petition in the Supreme Court of India for adoption rights of transgender people. She was a petitioner in the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) case in which the Supreme Court recognised transgender as the third gender. Gauri adopted a girl named Gayatri in 2008 after Gayatri’s mother died of AIDS.