Area 04 · Empowerment

Opportunity is not a matter of willpower.

Empowerment

The problem

When a woman does not move forward, the explanation offered is usually about her. She lacks confidence. She is not ambitious enough. She did not take the chance when it came.

The chance, on inspection, is often not much of a chance. It requires travelling a distance that is not safe after dark. It requires money the household has already allocated elsewhere. It requires permission. It requires childcare that does not exist. It requires a household to accept a change in who does what — and nobody has asked them to.

Confidence is not the first barrier. It is usually the last one, and it grows on its own once the others are removed.

What we do

Skills and livelihood support
Designed around the day a woman actually has, not an idealised one.
Work on access
Distance, cost, timing, safety and childcare are programme design questions, not excuses.
Work with families
A woman's opportunity frequently depends on a decision made by somebody else in her home. We include them rather than working around them.
Work with the community
Expectation is a powerful constraint. Changing what a community considers normal for its daughters changes what its daughters attempt.
Build networks, not just individuals
Women who know other women doing the same thing sustain it far longer than women doing it alone.

Who it is for

Women and adolescent girls, and the families and communities around them.

Layers this touches

IndividualFamilySchoolCommunitySociety
An adolescent girl in a blue dupatta, looking directly at the camera.

Work with us on this.

If you run a school, a community organisation or a CSR programme and want to change the conditions rather than run an event, we would like to hear from you.

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