Why ANEW?
The Cause
Literacy rate for women in India is 51%. Despite the low literacy rate, the employment of women in some of the industries in India is high. Statistics show women from socially and economically backward sections of the society are generally employed in traditional and unorganized sectors such as, domestic helps, agricultural workers and laborers in construction industry. Such women are insecure, underpaid and do not enjoy any of the benefits of employees in formal sectors. ANEW strives to bridge this gap by imparting the necessary skills to such women enabling them to secure reasonably well paid employment in certain formal sectors.
Why women?
- Education for women has a catalytic effect on every dimension of development: lower child and maternal mortality rates; increased educational attainment by daughters and sons; higher productivity; and improved environmental management. Together, these can mean faster economic growth and, equally important, wider distribution of the fruits of growth. Empowering women by investing in them may well be the highest-return investment available in the developing world.
- More education for women will also enable more and more women to attain leadership positions at all levels of society: Beginning with health clinics in the villages to parliaments in the capitals. This, in turn, will change the way societies will deal with problems and raise the quality of global decision making.
Women Empowerment has been lagging in India due to a variety of social, economic and cultural reasons. In our experience, the factors that challenge the empowerment of underprivileged women are:
- Social perspectives towards women;
- Parental/family indifference, ignorance, bias, illiteracy, fear and poverty;
- Irrelevant school/college course selection;
- Early family and sibling responsibility on girls and early marriage;
- Dearth of successful role models in the underprivileged society to provide inspiration.
- Lack of awareness about organizations, self help groups that can mentor, counsel and guide them
Strategy
ANEW focus on the women, aged 18 – 40 from the underprivileged society, educating, empowering them and on the achievement of targeted outcomes in over 6 months.
Reaching out to the women is central to the efforts being made by ANEW. ANEW’s training model ensures, that the women not only develop their skills, but also their personal strengths, which ensures improvement in their overall interaction with the society.
Access: By collaborating with different NGOs and government educational institutions and by periodic campaigning and advertising, we ensure the underprivileged women in need, reach our center.
Retention: By placing specific attention on each woman, by improving their learning capabilities through innovative training and by encouraging them to achieve the purpose of their training.
Continued mentoring: After completing their training from ANEW, a majority of women continue to approach the center for support and guidance. This ensures, they are 100% empowered and thereby our mission accomplished.
The ANEW model has three partners who are instrumental in implementing the projects. These partners are:
- The Industry authorized to certify the authenticity of our courses.
- The Government run educational institutions.
- Other NGOs that compliments our mission
The Industry is the most important part of the ANEW model. The trainees, at the end of completion of their respective courses, are inducted into the real world working environment, during the internship programs offered for a period of time, by the relevant industry.
The role of government run or aided educational institutions is to provide genuine candidates, access to courses offered at ANEW
The NGOs conduct awareness programs relevant to the trainees in their respective areas of work. We have established close working relationships with accredited and experienced NGOs.
Methodology
ANEW is engaged throughout the life cycle of each project, taking responsibility for the critical success factors underpinning the strategy:
- Identifying the deserving communities
- Identifying projects and cultivating relationships with relevant industries
- Generating resources for the project
- Locating the trainer and the development of the training material to implement the project
- Flexibility in terms of pace of teaching, teaching methodology, time-table etc. that suits every batch of trainees, so that no eligible candidate is left out of the program.
- Requesting feedback from trainees to improvise on the course content, duration and teaching methodology.
- Coordinating internship programs in association with the relevant industry.
- Inviting reputed companies to conduct campus interviews at our center
- Constantly adding new courses and updating the curriculum according to the current market needs
- Investing in the infrastructure necessary for the training programs.
- Quality monitoring of the project against targeted outcomes.
- Requesting feedback from employers about the trainees to improvise the course content, both technical and personality development courses.
- Conducts alumni meets and employers meet to discuss issues and concerns.
Demographic Profile
Through the continuous improvement in our approach, we have been able to reach to women from lowest rung of the social ladder. The demographic profile of the community that we serve is as follows:
- All of the students are from socially disadvantaged group
- 100% of the students are first generation literates.
- 100% of the students are from corporation/government run schools/colleges
- 75% of the students, as on date, are in the 18-25 year age group
- Students access ANEW center from over 4 districts (Thiruvallur, Chennai, Chengalpet, kancheepuram) in Tamil nadu.