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Free Women
In the face of many obstacles, we meet a courageous group of women who have organized to change their world.
Throughout India, women are forming 'self-help groups' (SHGs) to combat the many issues facing them. With the great help of Vani Chenguttuwan, we spoke at length with the SHG in Kalugumalai, in the state of Tamil Nadu, about their successes.
Many of these women's organizational successes came after intensive work with the DHAN Foundation and its Kalanjiam Community Banking program ('Wealth' in the Tamil language).
These organizations provided on-the-ground support for the women, micro-finance for small-business start-ups, and extensive education in crafts production and marketing - traditional skills enhanced by good business practices.
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Prerna Means Inspiration: Girls Refuse Forced Marriages to Gain an Education
Prerna Girls School is a part of the Study Hall School in Lucknow, India. It serves the largely impoverished girl children of the surrounding slums, by providing educations to 540 girls from kindergarten through 12th grade (as of June 2010). Founded by Dr. Urvashi Sahni, herself a dynamic force of nature, Prerna is one of those places that show a good future can become a reality.
The astounding success of the Prerna Girls School program is a lesson to many others working for education, women's empowerment and solving a host of issues identified in the Millennium Development Goals as critical: health, education, poverty eradication, literacy, population pressure, environmental degradation, to name a few.
