Help Women in India Become Professional Drivers

Because of you, the lives of disadvantaged women in India are being transformed every day. That’s 365 days a year. Hundreds of lives.

Here are two of the many stories of how you have helped us transform the lives of women who faced hardship and violence.

Laxmi

Laxmi’s husband is an alcoholic, he used to beat her regularly and earned erratically. The family income did not come to more than $119 per month – and most of it her husband squandered. Often she could not even afford to buy a milk for her son. Having lost her parents and with education only till the 9th standard, Laxmi could see no way out of this life.

But after completing our Women on Wheels training in February 2016, Laxmi got a job with the Delhi Commission for Women where she drives the helpline’s van to the rescue of victims of violence. She earns $163 every month on her own, more than doubling her family income.

‘‘As part of my job, I get to meet many survivors of domestic violence and when I tell them about my own journey, they get inspired.” Read Laxmi’s story

Meenu

Not having been allowed to study by her father, Meenu thought that her future, along with her other three sisters, would be to work within the four walls of the house. Thanks to the insistence of her mother she was able to study a little, but she was married early and had a daughter. Her husband was abusive and mistreated her. Her in laws would harass her and restrict her from doing anything she wanted to.

Now, thanks to undergoing our Women on Wheels training she says: “I know now that even I can become someone’s support, most importantly my own. I have changed in the way I talk, how I dress, and have become confident.” Read Meenu’s story

You are the change

Together, we have made a lot of difference. As our new 2015/16 annual report shows, we reached over 86,000 people living in slums of Delhi, Jaipur, Kolkata and Indore. We empowered 229 women from disadvantaged backgrounds to become professional drivers and take charge of their lives. We started working with 197 men in communities, from which our female trainees come, towards creating more equal and violence free spaces for women.

Last year our work attained novel successes - one of our trainees was placed as the first ever bus driver with Delhi Transport Corporation. We established a new partnership with Delhi Commission for Women that employs our drivers to drive to the rescue of the victims that call their helpline. And through partnership with NSKFDC, we are providing our Women on Wheels capacity development training to women from the most marginalized community of manual scavengers. Working with SAMAAN in Indore and Jan Vikas in Ahmedabad we brought Women on Wheels to these two cities, and also successfully launched the transformational programme in Kolkata.

Read more in our report about the challenges, opportunities and achievements that 2015/2016 brought us, and the promises we've made for next five years. With your support, we can make sure progress reaches the most marginalized.

With India being home to the world’s largest poor population, less than a third of women participating in labor market and an incident of domestic violence being reported every 5 minutes in India (and many more going unreported), the big challenge is still in front of us. There is an enormous number of resource-poor women facing complex issues. But working with you, we are determined to continue giving women the strength, skills and knowledge to transform their lives.

Thank you for your unwavering support.

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