Women’s rights projects

The Halcrow Foundation supports projects around the world that strive to give women equal rights, status and opportunities to men. One such project is in rural India where the foundation is supporting a micro credit scheme, which empowers village women through economic independence.

Raj Kuamari is wildly excited about her organic manure business and was incredibly happy to show it off to a group of Halcrow visitors earlier this year. 

In a 2m by 1m wooden worm bed in front of her house she is composting cattle dung collected from the local fields and selling it on as fertiliser. It’s a true cottage industry earning her a tiny number of rupees – but the business is making all the difference to her life and the well-being of her family where she is the sole breadwinner. 

Like many of her neighbours, Raj Kumari’s husband in unemployed. As the cities in India continue their rapacious expansion, the work opportunities for rural labourers reduce at a similarly alarming rate.          

Raj lives in the village of Khedla, a half hour’s drive from the huge, bustling metropolis of Gurgaon, shooting up close to the Indian capital, New Delhi. The contrast in lifestyles could not be more extreme. While Gurgaon is modern – and on the surface, wealthy – Khedla is old India in culture. And cripplingly poor.          

Purdah and child marriage are common in the rural villages. Women wear the veil and often are not allowed, or do not have the confidence, to leave the house without their husbands. They are isolated, as well as unable to work to improve their meagre incomes.           

This is where the Navjoti rural development project can help, and in particular the women’s development project.          

The Halcrow Foundation has committed £70,000 to this project over a four year period – which aims to promote real social change by empowering impoverished women.          

Navjyoti organises the women into self help groups and provides them with micro credit facilities to promote cottage industries. The Khedla group work at embroidering bed linen which is then sold via agents in Delhi. The income is used to make loans to group members like Raj for new businesses.           

“You see the women talking and talking at these groups,” says operations manager for the Navjyoti rural development project, Chandni Bedi. “But in another village you wouldn’t see that.” In Khedla there are plenty of women who have not been allowed –

or had the courage – to join in and who watch shyly through arched windows surrounding the sewing party.           

The rural development project’s initial focus was on schools and family centres but it swiftly moved on to female empowerment, Chandni Bedi explains, because women are both the educators and role models for their children. Seeing them find honest, entrepreneurial ways to make life better for their families teaches the children to do the same. “The children also realise the value of education and want to go to state schools,” Chandni says.

Khedla’s women value the foundation’s work highly. Sema, who is the hostess for the sewing party, sums up why: “We have found we can share our problems and try to solve them. We have learned to step out of the house and speak out.”