WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT - India

Where women’s work brings home the money

By Shankar Jadhav

Women mainly do house work, taking care of children, cooking, managing the house and supporting men in farming work. This work requires great skill and is something that men cannot do. But it is not valued because it does not bring in money. As a result, women are not treated equally with men. They are secondary in the family and community.

To deal with this situation, we decided to empower women by giving them skills that could help them earn. Various skills training were given to about 300 women from 4 villages. These included masala (spice) making, preparing hand-pounded rice and a variety of snacks, making paper bags, and tailoring. At the same time, some soft skills/ capacity building training was provided to improve leadership skills. Out of 300 women 30 women decided to work together. They formed a cooperative through which they will start a few businesses to earn money and work as a group, helping each other and sharing the skills and resources. Women are already making the products in groups.

Pictured above: Dairy products made by the women being sold at the shop in Pune (left). Products such as masala, snacks and hand pounded rice displayed for sale at a stall (right) during an exhibition in Pune. Click pictures to enlarge slightly

TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY

ICA: India has been trying to be self-sufficient through social projects supported by ICA Japan for about 20 years. One of them is the training centre. The social projects have been successful and we are now well known.  Other organizations are inviting us to conduct training for their staff and to help set up their projects. The training centre is now conducting enough training programmes to be self-supporting.  Thanks to Wayne and Shizuyo of ICA Japan who gave us their continuous support, we are testing a strawberry project in villages for their economic uplift with the help of NEC, a Japanese company.

Another key is facilitation work with organizations. ICA Australia, particularly John and Robyn Hutchinson, have played a big role in supporting ICA India. John even stayed in India with us for several months to train us in facilitation methods. Robyn came to conduct training with schools and opened doors for us. We are thankful to both of them for caring for us and journeying us through the process. We have been doing several facilitation programmes, among them a training programme for police for three years and a poultry industry for the last two years. We have trained 900 workers at Suguna Poultry.  A few other Industries and organizations around Pune have also invited us to facilitate their training. We are proud that we are training people and contributing to our country a unique method for development.

Pictured above: A training programme in facilitation and capacity building being conducted for workers at Suguna Poultry. Click pictures to enlarge slightly