Empowering Women in India at Every Stage of Life

Gender equality and empowering women and girls have emerged as part of a major global movement but despite a great deal of progress in recent years, women and girls continue to face discrimination and challenges holding them back from livelihood opportunities and contributing to society. 

The Desai Foundation is working to empower women and girls at every stage of life – from childhood through maturity.

During childhood, The Desai Foundation supports girls through health and hygiene programs, including menstrual health education and support, and education opportunities.  In quarter two of this year, we served 79,050 individuals through our health and hygiene camps, 53,897 through menstrual hygiene awareness camps, 1,053 students in schools, and 7,642 children through summer camps.

The Desai Foundation programs supporting women also include health and hygiene programs, including menstrual health education and support, livelihood opportunities, including employment, and entrepreneurial and vocational skills training. 

Over just the last 2 months, we have held 26 health events impacting 15,864 individuals, 73 livelihood events impacting 2,559 women, and 594 education events impacting 351,619 individuals. 

Our Heroes For Humanity (HFH) program, which employs over 500 agents of change, primarily women, focuses on empowering women to deliver care and vaccine information, food and other supplies, and information on our existing programs (mentioned above) around health screenings and camps, livelihood and menstrual health education, vocational training, and more.

Moving into the future, HFH will also be operating our Primary Health and Hygiene Education program at government schools in 15 districts throughout the 8 states that we serve. The goal of the project is to educate children at an early age about health, hygiene, and nutrition which shall help instill healthy habits and healthy lifestyles. This program will impact 90,0000 students.

Links:

• https://thedesaifoundation.org/our-work

The Desai Foundation’s Heroes for Humanity program employs over 500 agents of change, primarily women, who respond to the ever-changing needs of the rural communities we serve.  With a focus on empowering women, the Heroes for Humanity program delivers care and vaccine information, food and other supplies, and information on our existing programs around health screenings and camps, livelihood and menstrual health education, vocational training, and more. We are also focusing on providing support for local communities affected by the unprecedented heat wave currently sweeping India as village farmers face dramatically dropping crop yields and as a result experience food shortages.

Today, we celebrate the accomplishments of these 500 Heroes, The Desai Foundation team, and our partners on the ground.  We are proud to say that we have reached a population of over 6.5 million individuals in over 1,400 rural communities in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Odisha. 

We know the Heroes for Humanity program is transformative not just for the communities it serves, but for our Heroes themselves. To that end, in partnership with GlobalGiving and other funders, more than 16 million rupees (202,640 USD) have been paid as salaries to our Heroes including many rural Indian women. Having not only the support system provided by The Desai Foundation and our partners, but the opportunity to create sustainable income is truly life-changing for women who disproportionately experience inequities. 

In addition, The Desai Foundation has launched Heroes for Humanity in its eighth state — Karnataka! We are excited to bring programming like menstrual health education and products, health screenings and camps, and more.

Looking ahead, The Desai Foundation will continue to train women as heroes within their communities, providing skills, knowledge, education, sustainable income, self-reliance and thus dignity to our women, and the communities we serve. We know our dedicated Heroes will continue their social outreach to ensure the people we serve have the tools they need to not only survive, but thrive for many years to come!

Links:

• https://thedesaifoundation.org/Heroes/