Women Empowerment

"PROJECT ARYA"

Rural Project on Skill Development for Women Empowerment

Women form a significant proportion of work force in India. The key strategy for women's empowerment and gender equality is to combine policy and institutions at the local level.Empowerment of women is necessary for socio-economic development of any country. Women helps in better development of children and hence an increase in their literacy rate among them is the need of the hour. Women if given the opportunities and the right exposure can excel themselves in any field. Since girls and women represent 50% of the world population, enabling them to participate in their local economics help broaden the employment pool. The aim of skill development, particularly in case of women, is not only to prepare them for jobs, but also to improve the performance of women workers by enhancing the quality of work in which they are engaged. There are few major challenges, which need to be addressed for building a conducive ecosystem, of skill development for the women workforce. It has become very important to ensure women empowerment through skill development in the development programmes and thereby strive to have a conducing atmosphere for their effective participation.

ANK has been working continuously for women since 2004 and believes in empowering women by providing them a proper platform where they can learn, earn, grow and expand. Keeping this objective intact we started a Rural Project on Skill Development for Women Empowerment at a village named Khatana at Dadri, Uttar Pradesh. The name of the project is "Project Arya." It is a Hero Cycle supported rural intervention at Khatana Village. The centre was inaugurated by Ms. Aishwarya Munjal; CSR Head of Hero Cycles.The project is aimed towards upliftment of the society vis-a-vis providing exposure to the downtrodden youth and underprivileged women by imparting soft skills training and vocational training to enrich their capabilities for an independent and bright future.

The centre is one of its best kind and is well equipped with a computer lab that has 10 desktops with high speed internet. The beneficiaries are provided with the basics of computer education e.g. M.S-Office, Paint, Notepad, Internet Surfing and the like. The other course that we offer is Cutting and Tailoring. We have 10 sewing machines for the course and women are taught from the basics of stitching to dress making in both theory and practical classes extensively with one of the best experts from the fashion designing fraternity. The course is for four months as of now. Alongside these two courses we cater to an important subject i.e. soft skill training. The training is conducted simultaneously with the regular course classes as that is very important for the rural population and empowering women.

In soft skill session ANK has been practising the best and organised sessions on etiquettes, on how to talk, carrying a pleasing personality, sitting and walking with a proper posture. Personal counselling, goal setting are the other themes that are worked upon. Beneficiaries are trained to face the job market as well the competitive world outside. Adding to the regular classes we have a Fashion Designer herself as a guest faculty to enrich our beneficiaries with her skills.

Skills and knowledge are the motivating factors of the economic growth and communitydevelopment of any country. They have become even more important in this increasing pace ofglobalization.India is among the young countries in the world with the proportion of the work force in the agegroup of 15-59 years growing steadily.

Our rural centre has been able to make a positive mark in the entire area because of its objective. Women have started coming forward to learn and enhance their skills in order to become financially independent in near future.The National Policy on Skill Development (2015) highlights that in order to improve theproductivity of the economy; participation of women in the labour force needs to be improved.Economic growth and development of any country is determined by human, physical and financial resources.

We aim to empower these rural women by providing them in their skills and motivating them in doing better in their lives. The objective of setting up our centre in the rural area is to assess the status of rural women on selected domains of empowerment, to identify skills available with women in the target group, to upgrade the textile related skills of the targeted rural women, to spread the impact of entrepreneurial efforts on women empowerment, to give them the opportunity that they are generally refrained from because of the prevailing patriarchal society.

We are a team of professionals passionate about affecting the world around us in a favorable manner. We care about our environment and leading toward a sustainable world along with women leaders. And we are lucky to receive an opportunity to serve equally.