Empowering women to lead a life of dignity

1. Context:

The motivation to engage with these communities sprang from a realisation that despite the country’s growth rate and rising GDP, there were rural communities just outside Pune where even basic socio-economic indicators were abysmally low. Subsistence farming, poor access to education and healthcare, low participation in local governance, gender and caste-related obstacles to personal growth – this was the scenario that confronted Anubhuti Social Empowerment & Educational Foundation back then.

2. About NGO

Anubhuti through its various projects is determined to reduce incidences of gender inequality, by providing equal access to opportunities through improving quality of education as well as creating social entrepreneurs who not only helps in earning livelihood but also helps to create a stronger, empowered community.

Samanway is a project that is aimed at providing forward linkages to the small farmer. Farm produce is typically affected by price fluctuations, high transportation costs and wastage due to low shelf life and negligible income from farms. Through Samanway, efforts have been made towards collecting the local produce from small farmers and processing it.

A well-equipped Food Processing Unit has been set up and locally sourced produce like lemon, chilies, tamarind, and tomatoes are pro-cessed and marketed. Product identification, standardization and marketing have helped in positioning the products in a highly competitive market. Local youth are employed while farmers are getting a fair price for their farm prod

Kruti is solely aimed at providing employment opportunities to women. Women in rural communities have little scope to earnings as they are saddled with household responsibilities while providing an additional hand as farm labour. Financial empowerment of women has been initiated by providing training in tailoring of apparel, accessories and home furnishings.

We have been investing our private fund to support the foundation. we have invested more than 20 lakhs in the foundation so far. The foundation is also supported by close family and friends who believe in the objects of the programme.

Foundation has achieved many interesting milestones so far. Few major achievements are given below;

Samanway (Food processing unit)

• We could able to connect farmers to the centre. We are working with more than 50 farmers who are regularly providing their produce to the centre
• We could generate employment for more than 15 unemployed youths in the food processing unit.
• We have obtained all required government certification including FSSI licence.
• We have standardised 15 products.
• Our products are also approved by Sodexo, they are regular customer of ours.
• Our clients are conscious food, Satvyk organic chain, ON shops promoted by Kolte Patil etc.

Kruti

• We have trained more than 250 rural women in high quality stitching skills. Out of 250, 50 % have started earning income ranges from 1000 to 12000 per month
• 10 women have been groomed as master trainers who are conducting training in different centres in Pune and outside Pune in association with many organizations.
• Our products are launched in amazon successfully
• This centre has also created horizontal opportunities for women. For example accountant and unit in-charge come from the same vicinity
• Kruti has held more than 10 exhibitions successfully in various parts of Pune city , we have received overwhelmed response from our client

Shashwat

Indian Education system is predominately a mark driven system which seldom provides opportunities for students to gain Knowledge especially in rural con-text. Thus, bringing context with knowledge is a very important fact, this can only be done when the students are exposed to their culture and language. Hence, diving deep through the local language for bringing relevance which can generate curiosities and enthusiasm for learning

Today, where world is a global village, one cannot even overlook the power of English language. Thus, exposure to English language where instead of stu-dents get into translation mode, efforts should be to empower students to ex-press themselves without hesitation and even breaking inhibitions for learning foreign language is very important.

The efforts must be towards changing mind set of teachers where they can see their roles as not teachers but as transformers. This has led us to design a curriculum on the below mentioned pillars.

Experiential learning

Experiential learning approach will provide these opportunities to establish linkages where students can feel, see and internalize concepts of theories surrounding them. This will help them to take education or learning beyond class room. Further, such approach not only helps in learning but also helps to questions many fundamental challenges like gender inequity, caste and class structure, power structure etc.

Integration of subjects

When it comes to Indian Education Compartmentalized approach to the education has taken away the flavour of learning. Therefore, we felt that integration of the subjects will be a basic design structure of the curriculum. This will help to see a bigger picture which has many small pieces (as subjects) in a large scheme of learning