Women's Empowerment in Indian Villages (WEIV) Strategy

1. Social Empowerment:
Women's empowerment initiatives are the focus of WEIV's working strategy. WEIV strives to work with a rights based perspective to transform the lives of women, with a working focus on gender equality and justice.

* ARD believes in the philosophy that to empower a single woman is to empower the society in turn.

Social empowerment forms an integral component in the programmes delivered by WEIV. Issues relating to Health, Literacy, Basic Human Rights, Domestic Violence, Right To Information and Child Rights are addressed.

This has resulted in a substantial increase in the confidence level of the women, such that they have a higher self esteem and can interact in the community at large with greater confidence.

2. Economic Empowerment:
Income Generation Activity (IGA) has to date been one of the major strategies used by WEIV through which the women themselves have striven to be self-sustaining and able to become self-dependent.

Self Help Groups serve as an important tool for economic empowerment through the process of savings and credit linkages. In this way the women are enabled to contribute to their household economy, increasing their bargaining power within the household.

Self Help Groups have transferred real economic power into the hands of women, which has considerably reduced their dependence on men. In times of crisis they are able to deliver financial help to their husbands.

3. Political Empowerment:
ARD strives to create a platform where these “most vulnerable women” can move forward together through their increasing capacity and bargaining power and can thereby fight for their rights and entitlements themselves.

For the first time, the women are now coming out of their house and are interacting actively with various government and bank officials.

Economic empowerment triggers social empowerment and social empowerment triggers political empowerment.

Read about the Socio-Economic status of the area here

Success Stories
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