Educate and Empower 500 Women & Girls in India

Centre for Women’s Development and Research Education to Empower 500 Women and Adolescent Girls  Update- November 2014

We have been continuing our activities among women and adolescent girls.

Education and income generation programme for women: The important thing happened is the 20 women who had initiated the vermi-compost making unit had collected the vermin-compost from their units. They are all very happy about that. Each women could able to get 5-10 kilograms of vermin-compost. This compost was distributed free among other women in their villages and nearby villages to motivate other women to involve in vermin-compost making. Another thing happened was 10 beekeeping units was distributed among women and 4 could able to maintain it and collect honey. All these are giving hope for the women and us. Now in the women’s meetings we are discussing the possibilities of initiating a producers company so that they can market their products and also provide support for women involved in kitchen gardens. The women have made plans to visit some producers company, but the nearst successful companies are in Kerala State, so they have postponed the visit for future. Now women want to expand their kitchen gardens so that they can produce more and sell to raise their income. We are also looking for some market agencies in Chennai to help us in this regard. We have organized regular village level women’s meeting during this period particularly to discuss about the producers company and the registration process. 20-25 women participated in these village meetings and we have organized these meetings in 21 villages. During this period we have also participated in the Joy of Giving event to raise funds. We have set up stalls in a IT(Information Technology) company complex. There we could able sell the handmade soaps made by rural women.

Computer skill training and life skill training for adolescent girls: We are continuing the computer skill training and weekend life skill trainings for adolescent girls. During this period an intern Ms.Bavana from Chirist University organized career guidance and spoken English classes for adolescent girls. 48 girls participated in these programmes. We have also started using Educational DVDs particularly for 10^th and 12^th Standard students. We found it very useful because in rural areas it is difficult to get tutors in Maths, English for high school students. We wish to strengthen this programme. In the weekend life skill education programme 200 girls participated. As mentioned in our earlier reports now all the girls are continuing their education. Rarely girls discontinue their education after puberty. Their mothers understand the importance of education. It is really encouraging for us because earlier we used to run non-formal education centres for school dropout children now we have closed all the centres because all the children are going to schools.