Engage&Empower girls & boys for Girl Effect-India

Warm greetings from IDEA Foundation!!

We live in a world in which women living in poverty face gross inequalities and injustice from birth to death. 

When women are restricted to housework and prevented from leaving home, they can’t contribute to the family income. This leads to greater poverty, slower economic growth and a lower standard of living. 

We, at IDEA Foundation are trying to change this situation through various activities and projects which help families to escape the cycle of poverty .We have started a project for empowering women and young girls through skill development programs, giving underprivileged women a second chance to lead a better life.

IDEA runs an employability enhancement programme where youth and young women are imparted vocational training and life skill sessions. We are successfully conducting different courses under vocational training such as Beautician course, Tailoring classes, Fashion Designing and Computer courses. The course duration varies from 3 to 6 months. Along with these courses all the participants are imparted life skill classes and ‘spoken English classes’ as per their requirement.

These coures were really successful. We approached the communities , did door to door canvasing for women to attend these course. After the completion of these courses many women started earning immediately. Afterwards , the we didn't have to do much for mobilisation as women from these communities came forward and took admission for these courses. 

This year we have introduced a new course for cooking and catering, called ‘Home Chef’. But when we started mobilzation for this course the response was negative. Women were reluctant to join a course where we taught cooking as it was nothing new to them, they said what is the use of learning  such basic thing like cooking. Then we changed our strategy. We decided to conduct workshops for mobilization, where we gave them exposure to different methods of cooking, explained them the demand for food stalls , we also took them for exposure visits. We gave them samples of different food items. When they understood , cooking can be used as an income generating skill, which is in high demand nowadys, they showed interest in the course. 

Many times , we have changed our strategies , as one straegy will not work for every skill, or for every area. Even in our educational projects, we have tried different approaches when one strategy didn't work well. It is always a trial and error method for us, or we learn by doing. But whatever be our approach our mision remains the same, we try our best to bring changes through our initiatives in development and education for all.

Our sincere thanks to all Donors.