Pathway Out of Poverty for Women of Odisha, India https://grants.dudleytdoughertyfoundation.org/proposals-2014/pathway-out-of-poverty-for-women-of-odisha-india https://grants.dudleytdoughertyfoundation.org/@@site-logo/sitelogo-75x75.png

Pathway Out of Poverty for Women of Odisha, India

Additional Information
Used for	Wings of Hope is helping women in Odisha, the poorest state in India with the highest level of child malnutrition, form Self-Help Groups (SHGs) to start small businesses as a sustainable source of income. This income empowers the women to feed their malnourished children, provide better pre- and post-natal care, purchase school supplies, and raises them to a higher level of parity in this male-dominated society. The program also provides the women, their children and the surrounding community vitamins, nutritional supplements, and training and supplies to implement sustainable food programs.
Benefits	By empowering India’s poorest women with the resources to provide for their children, and supporting their health with better nutrition, the program helps them aspire to a life beyond their current hand-to-mouth existence. When people can move beyond focusing on attaining the most basic material needs (food, water, medicine, etc.) and envision a better future, they have a reason to fight for, care about and support their communities. This investment in their own futures and the future of their community necessarily makes them better citizens of the world.
Proposal Description	PROJECT GOAL: To empower the women of Odisha to raise themselves and their families out of lives of extreme poverty and discrimination. OBJECTIVES: Wings of Hope is partnering with Nari & Sishu Kalyan Samittee (NSKS), an Indian nonprofit supporting women living in extreme poverty in 16 villages in Balasore in the state of Odisha. Wings of Hope and NSKS are helping these women build a better future using a three-pronged approached: First, we help women start small businesses—using traditional, easily accessible materials—to create a sustainable source of income to support their families. Second, we distribute vitamins and dietary supplements. And, third, we teach women how to improve their families’ health by adopting sustainable food programs such as home gardens and raising small animals. STRATEGIES: 1) Establish and support SHGs: Wings of Hope and NSKS help village women form SHGs of 10-20 women. Each SHG sets a regular meeting schedule, decides how it will govern itself, and agrees on business and savings goals. More established SHGs, either from the village or other villages, mentor newly forming ones. 2) Train SHGs in entrepreneurship and financial literacy: Wings of Hope and NSKS staff teach SHGs the skills they need to successfully run a business, including: cost-effective ways to source materials, cooperative purchasing to create economies of scale, bargaining techniques, and assessing the existing market for proposed products. 3) Provide microloans to SHGs: We educate SHGs about existing financial resources and, when feasible, encourage them to open an account with a local bank that can offer them a loan. If local banks are not an option, we offer them microloans (avg. $200) that they can reasonably pay back once their businesses are up and running. 4) Build women-only work centers: Due to gender discrimination in this region, it is difficult for women to participate in entrepreneurial activities unless they are in an all-female space. Building women-only work centers is integral to our program. In addition to being safe spaces for women to make and sell their crafts, the centers are places for sharing resources, ideas, support and friendship. 5) Use work centers as village hubs for distributing vitamins and dietary supplements: All Wings of Hope projects are holistic. Our goal goes beyond helping the women create sustainable income streams; we want to help improve their overall quality of life. Toward this end, we will distribute vitamins to the women, their children and the community at large and offer dietary supplements to children suffering from malnutrition. 6) Provide seeds, baby chickens and education on establishing home gardens and raising small animals as sustainable food sources. HOW WE WOULD USE THIS GRANT MONEY: A $10,000 grant from the Dudley T. Dougherty Foundation would fully fund one year of programming in one village. Specifically, it would pay for the following: construction of a women-only work center; providing microloans to three SHGs; a one-year supply of vitamins/nutritional supplements; training and supplies to implement sustainable food programs; entrepreneurship training; and database support and administrative supplies. See attached budget.