Business School for Rural Women in Maharashtra

Summary

The Business School provides technical skills to rural women without formal education and to girls forced to drop out of school, enabling them to start and/or improve their own micro enterprises.

What is the issue, problem, or challenge?

Many rural women in Maharashtra are either uneducated or are pulled from school at a young age. To address this situation, the Business School offers a variety of technical classes at our rural branch offices to enable women to start new businesses or expand existing ones. As such, the business school creates entrepreneurial opportunities for women, allowing them to enter the rural job market and strengthen economically-weak communities through micro and small enterprises.

How will this project solve this problem?

We offer classes ranging from tailoring and embroidery to financial literacy and computer skills. Each course aims to enable the women to begin a new business or expand upon an existing one, allowing our students to gain financial independence.

Potential Long Term Impact

Our School aims to improve the long-run economic status of women and their families through new business opportunities enhanced through entrepreneurial skills. We expect to graduate approximately 200 students in the School's 2nd year of operation.

Project Message

“All my life I have dug wells in the sun to earn my wages. For the first time in my life I am sitting in shelter and making cotton bags and selling them after taking the course in the business school.
- Shaila Mane, A student from the bag making course, Vaduj.

Additional Documentation

This project has provided additional documentation in a Microsoft Word file (projdoc.doc).

Resources