The Indian Constitution provides equal rights to all citizens of India including men, women and children. The Constitution not only guarantees equality to women but also empowers the State and its agencies to make provisions and take measures, if there’s a need, for affirmative action towards women.
India is home to one-fifth population of the world’s population. Despite the constitutional safeguards, laws and policies upholding women’s rights there is still a lot to be done to guarantee equal status to women in society.
There’s a need for a holistic approach towards women empowerment in the areas of social, economic, political and health in India. CSR funding has come a long way in bridging the gap between law and policy and their implementation.
Empowering women is essential for a healthy society and a healthy family unit. There are several NGOs and self-help groups working in the area to bring about change and then there are CSR activities ensuring social welfare and upliftment of women.
In sync with SDGs
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or Global Goals – a collection of 17 interlinked global goals designed to be a ‘shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future’ – were set up in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), to be achieved by 2030.
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by world leaders, embody a roadmap for progress that is sustainable and leaves no one behind. SDG 5 is to ‘Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.’
Gender equality and women empowerment, however, are integral to all the other 16 goals. UN Women’s 2018 flagship report ‘Turning promises into action: Gender equality in the 2030 Agenda’ features data, stories, videos and publications that illustrate how and why gender equality matters across all the Sustainable Development Goals, and how the goals affect the real lives of women and girls everywhere.
Skill development important
Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) – India’s largest Fast Moving Consumer Goods Company with a heritage of over 80 years in India and touches the lives of two out of three Indians – has been active in several gender equality-based projects that focus on skill development of women, rural livelihoods and women empowerment.
As part of ‘Project Shakti’, activities have been undertaken to financially empower and provide livelihood opportunities to women in rural India. Here, the women are trained for familiarisation with the company’s products and basic tenets of distribution management. A team of Rural Sales Promoters (RSPs) coach help Shakti Entrepreneurs in managing their business.
Project Shakti has nearly 1,36,000 Shakti Entrepreneurs aka ‘Shakti Ammas’ across 18 Indian states. The most important achievement of this project has been that it has helped foster an entrepreneurial mindset among these women. Other than that, the programme has helped Shakti Entrepreneurs in gaining skills of selling products, communication skills, self-confidence, etc.
Godrej Consumer Products Limited’s ‘Project Salon-I’ is a vocational training programme for women, designed to train young women in the basic grooming and beautification skills of beauty, skin, hair care, and mehndi application.
The women are also trained in life skills and entrepreneurship development to inculcate the spirit of entrepreneurship and self-reliance. The programme aims at employability, entrepreneurship, and empowerment of women.
Self-sustenance key to growth
The Self-employment and Skill development initiative of CCL Products India Ltd. – founded in the year 1994 with the vision of creating only the finest and the richest coffee in the world – has worked in the areas of girl child education, provision of safe shelters, making them skilled and economically self-sufficient, among other achievements.
The company, with support from other foundations, has provided vocational training to women including tailoring, beautician courses, fashion designing, jewellery making, jute bag making, etc. The initiative has impacted thousands of women across 70 villages near Hyderabad. As part of the self-sustenance programme, the company also provided sewing machines and set up jute factories for rural women in the area.
Hindustan Zinc Limited’s flagship CSR Project called ‘Project Sakhi’ is aimed to mobilising rural women into Self-Help Groups (SHGs) in order to facilitate capacity building of these women in the areas of leadership, skill development and entrepreneurship.
As part of this project, there are more than two thousand SHGs, about 200 Village Level Organizations and seven Federations with a membership of more than 27,000 women. Such training programmes and capacity building initiatives are key to inculcate self-confidence in women.
The leadership skills imparted to women as part of the project through training and capacity building have given fruitful results as they have given platform and a strong foundation for the grooming of future leaders.
Addressing nutritional concerns
The Women and Child Development (WCD) department is working closely with many corporate groups for key projects in the country. The focus areas of these projects range from malnutrition to skill development.
Britannia Nutrition Foundation has collaborated with the WCD for taking initiatives to reduce child malnutrition in Melghat Region in Maharashtra by putting ‘concentrated efforts to address the problem of child malnutrition’ in Melghat region of Amravati district. This area, with a predominantly tribal population, comprises the two Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) project blocks of Dharni and Chikhaldara.
Another project with Reliance Foundation focusses on developing Kitchen Gardens across Maharashtra to reduce malnutrition and improve health and nutrition of women and children in the state.
The Reliance Foundation Team is carrying out orientations / workshops, trainings and handholding support for establishment of these demonstration Kitchen Gardens. In time, these demonstration Kitchen Gardens shall serve as training centres for the rest of the Anganwadis in a block.
In another CSR initiative of JSW Foundation in collaboration with the WCD, child malnutrition among the Anganwadi children in Jawhar Taluka of Palghar District will be tackled. The Suddrirha Bharat Abhiyan will be implemented through Nutrition Surveillance including technology based growth monitoring; Growth promotion through complimentary meals; Watershed development and farm- based productivity enhancement for the long-term solution through livelihood generation and food security; and, long-term institutional strengthening processes.
Another CSR project, a flagship programme of Subhash Chandra Foundation under the aegis of Subhash Chandra led Zee Entertainment, called ‘Program Sarthi’, works on different verticals in the area of gender equality.
These include women empowerment, social justice issues, alternative livelihood, health and education by raising social awareness on the rights and duties amongst the people. Program Sarthi has been successful in preventing female foeticide and child marriage in several areas and has successfully conducted in the area of women empowerment.
The project started in the central Indian states of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, later being rolled out in neighbouring states of Bihar and Jharkhand. The intervention areas include Education (RTE, restart education for dropouts), micro entrepreneurship, preventing domestic violence as part of the social justice vertical and child immunisation and awareness and early diagnosis under the health segment.
The programme seeks to create a nation where citizens are well informed about their rights and duties; empowered enough to raise their voices against the problems faced by them, which are then effectively addressed and resolved.