WOMAN CENTER: Woman Opportunity MANagement

NEED is an organization of over 215 social entrepreneurs with the vision of being; ‘A responsive and responsible human development initiative that keeps people at the nucleus of organization, towards empowering the deprived section of community’. We focus on promoting youth, women and children, enabling livelihoods through a number of strategies, particularly child health, forming a holistic approach to poverty eradication. Currently, our grass-roots network reaches 4850 villages and 450,000 people in the rural districts in Uttar Pradesh & Bihar, India. Our potential is limitless and we need your help to continue to grow…

India's population has recently surpassed the one billion mark, out of which the enormous bulk are considered to be very poor. Uttar Pradesh is India’s most populated state, with a population of 166 Million, whilst Bihar has a population of 83 Million (Yojana, 2009), in combination they form the most poverty-stricken geographical region of the country. It is these two regions that NEED, with the help of Global Giving donors, has been implementing its project to raise sufficient funds for a new WOMAN Center (W-Women O-Opportunity MAN-Management Center). Dedicated exclusively to the needs of rural women; we aim to create a dynamic center that will cater to the wide range of needs and create a diverse set of opportunities to forward the cause of women empowerment.

The centre will contain the following components:

• Entrepreneurial Training Centre – training in financial management, product marketing, the development of demand driven businesses and how to create social change in their communities. The methods used will be practical, live demonstrations in real situations in order to reach illiterate women • Crafts Centre – this section will provide an area and tools for women to learn various crafts and to hold workshops to learn technical skills from each other to forward their business. Some examples of crafts currently being made include chikan craft and zardozi (embroidery), jute products, candles and incense sticks. • Retail Section – this section would allow women to sell their products direct to consumers, thus avoiding middlemen and increasing the women’s profits • Micro-finance Training and Facilitation – this unit will train women to create the basic micro-finance infrastructure and will sensitise formal institutions in understanding grassroots realities and in designing better financial products for the rural poor. It will also look at how to use the capital for social change • Educational Intervention Programme and Gender Based Training – Over the next few years, NEED will build a curriculum covering many issues affecting women, based on NEED’s experience at grassroots level and the experiences of social service practitioners from many NGOs. The course will be partly based in the centre and partly in the field in order to prepare workers for rural social work.

To date the project is still very much in its initial stages of raising sufficient capital to implement these plans. Thus we still urgently need funds from Global Giving Donors to make this project a success and improve the lives of many poor women.

In order to indicate the extent of our work and the potential of this new project, our existing women’s centers aid around 206,000 women a year, and with your help this number could increase to even more.