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Home Women Empowerment

Women Empowerment

Empowering Women to Empower Families

Helping women earn a better living pays off for everybody – mothers provide better nutrition and healthcare and spend more on their children. On average, girls and women spend 90% of their earned income on their families. We’ve been providing vocational training since 1989. After the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, we began focusing on training women in particular. This turned out to be a smart investment – research has shown that empowering women with vocational training and economic opportunity is one of the most effective means to reduce poverty throughout entire communities.

We’ve provided more than 130,000 economically vulnerable women throughout India with vocational training, start-up capital and marketing assistance, as well as access to microcredit loans from government-regulated banks and affordable insurance plans. The women use these assets to form self-help groups, share microsavings accounts and start their own home-based businesses. For many of the women, it is the first job they have ever had.

INDIA’S FIRST UNESCO CHAIR ON GENDER EQUALITY AND WOMEN EMPOWERMENT

13,500+ Amrita SREE SHGs

2,00,000+ Women Participants

Tailoring: MAM established nine tailoring schools and distributed 2,000 sewing machines—one to every to every program participant.

Nursing: 450 women were provided free training in nursing assistance along with a stipend to study at Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences, Kochi.

Driving: 500 youths received free driving lessons and received driver’s licenses to facilitate employment as professional bus, truck and taxi drivers.

Education: Seven eligible women received full scholarships to attend Amrita University Mysore’s School of Education and earned Master’s degrees.

Handicrafts: 1,500 women trained in making coir (coconut fiber) and coir-based products and over 150 women trained in handloom weaving.

Electronic Repair: 200 youths trained in niche trades including mobile phone and TV/VCR repair; plumbing; fashion design and handmade bag production.

13,500+
Self Help Groups across India
2,00,000+
Members and 10 Lakh Beneficiaries
50,000+
Members Skill Trained
30Crs.
Annual Seed Funding

Empowerment through education and employment

The Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004 not only destroyed thousands of lives and homes, it also made a serious impact upon the fishing industry. In southern India, thousands upon thousands of fishing nets and boats were destroyed, putting fishermen out of work. Furthermore, India’s aquatic ecosystems were seriously disturbed. For the fishermen whose boats and nets were still working, this resulted in meager catches for months together.

When the fishermen and their families explained the crisis to Amma, she immediately understood that alternate forms of livelihood were necessary. Amma felt that least one member of each family from the fishing community should become proficient in a trade not dependent on the sea. In order to help facilitate this, Amma launched the first community-based self-help-group (SHG) program. The program became known as Amrita SREE: Amrita Self-Reliance, Education & Employment Program.

What began as a response to the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami has today spread throughout Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra. Currently there are more than 11,000 Amrita SREE SHGs with more than 130,000 women participating across India. In the Andaman Islands, we have established an additional 1,000 self-help groups.

In providing vocational education, start-up capital, marketing assistance and access to micro-credit loans and microsavings accounts from government-regulated banks, M.A. Math is working to equip unemployed and economically vulnerable women with the skills and means to set up small-scale, cottage-industry businesses. Research has shown that empowering women with equal economic opportunity is one of the most effective ways to reduce poverty throughout entire communities.

Self-help groups are based upon a formula established by the Reserve Bank of India identify each targeted community’s particular needs and existing skills and resources before launching a phase of vocational training. Courses are selected from proposals that emerge from the targeted communities and offered at reputed vocational institutions. Finally, self-help groups are formed according to geographic proximity, each consisting of approximately 20 women. (Men who are family members of the women in the group are also eligible to receive vocational training.)

While the self-help groups operate autonomously, M.A. Math nurtures them towards successful independence. In addition to providing vocational training, M.A. Math helps each group come up with a viable business plan and assists in packaging and marketing the group’s retail products. Some of the fields in which Amrita SREE has helped create SHGs include: tailoring, handicrafts, electronic-repair, account systems, beauty-parlor management, feminine-hygiene products production, paper products, ready-made garments, leather products, bakery items, hand-looming, coir-making, garment-making, communal farming, food processing, banana culture and rice-flour production.

Districts in Kerala where Amrita SHGs have been formed

District No. of SHGs Total No. of Members
Alappuzha  5,746  80,260
Kollam  2,695  38,900
Ernakulam  347  16,720
Kozhikode  330  16,350
Thrissur  521  9,330
Thiruvananthapuram  465  7,880
Kasaragod  458  7,800
Kottayam  197  3,000
Pathanamthitta  176  2,970
Kannur  170  3,100
Idukki  163  2,820
Malapuram  55  750
Wayanad  40  600
Mahe  38  520

In all of Kerala

 11,401

 1,91,000

States of India in which most Amrita SHGs have been formed

State

No. of SHGs

Total No. of Members

Kerala
11,401
1,91,000
Tamil Nadu
250
3,750
Karnataka
230
2,900
Andhra Pradesh
110
1,350
Maharashtra
100
1,100
Other states
100
1,200

Total

 12,191

 2,01,300

Total No. of Members including Family

 6,03,900

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