Celebrating Women’s Empowerment – The Art of Living Way

Project Pavitra: bridging the gaps in awareness and hygiene

Project Pavitra, started by The Art of Living under the able guidance of Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, has already reached many rural, urban slum and tribal areas to work to uplift women. It has impacted nearly 1,11,000 rural women through different livelihood methods like food processing, bag making, tailoring and embroidery, agarbatti rolling, and areca nut plate making. Around 623 self-help groups have been formed to work in these areas.

The project also focuses on women’s menstrual health and hygiene, primarily emphasizing adolescent girls. A topic of discussion still considered taboo in many parts of the country, this project aims to generate awareness regarding menstrual health among girls and enable them to manage their menstruation hygienically. Till now, Project Pavitra has reached more than 1,15,800 girls through workshops in India, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Nepal, Bhutan and Africa, with more than 5,910 Project Pavitra trainers engaged for the purpose.

Project Shakti: business growth and financial stability for rural women 

Project Shakti is another project that looks forward to seeing the entrepreneurial journey kick off for rural women nationwide. An initiative by The Art of Living to nurture underprivileged & underexposed women and educate them in the field of entrepreneurship, thus creating financial self-sufficiency, is the goal for this project. It provides much-needed opportunity and support to underprivileged and underexposed women. It works with them to provide a solution for education, skill development, financial safety, employability, and mental health. It covers various programs like:

• the capacity building program
• entrepreneurial opportunity and skill training, and
• menstrual health and hygiene awareness program 

Through these steps, Project Shakti provides a holistic way to live a mentally, physically, and emotionally balanced life with financial independence. The project also promotes local produce and the ‘Make in India‘ initiative. 

So far, 1,000 women in Dharavi, Mumbai and 500 in the slums of Bangalore are in the process of training, and this is just a start, with many more women to be helped.

With a noble aim, Project Shakti wants 108 entrepreneurial establishments nationwide to make underprivileged & underexposed women financially independent. 

JalTara: bringing positivity to the lives of women 

Project JalTara, an initiative to uplift the agricultural practices in rural regions, apart from managing the water crisis in India, also caters to rural women in various ways. Today, 54% of India’s area faces a water scarcity problem. Moreover, only around 6% of rainwater is stored underground, worsening the situation daily. Project JalTara, through water recharge structures in fields across the country, has figured out a way of empowering farmers by retaining more rainwater underground. Until now, 50 villages have seen around 20,000 recharge structures dug and filled with rock and pebbles. A considerable rise in underground water level has been observed in areas where the solution for the water crisis has been applied.

The rise in water level has ensured that women in the villages find fresh and hygienic drinking water and don’t have to search for it by walking long distances, thus saving time and energy. Water availability has increased crop yield, and personal hygiene for women has improved. With increased household income, cooking gas has become affordable in farming households, and the quality of life for women in rural areas has bettered. After addressing water scarcity in Maharashtra, the project looks to expand in the coming years, reaching 100,000 villages nationwide and influencing the livelihood of innumerable farming households. The massively scaled project aims to relieve India from its groundwater crisis by finding a sustainable solution to the problem of groundwater depletion, which has directly affected crop yield and the quality of life for all rural women. 

About The Art of Living – Social Projects

The Art of Living, a non-profit, educational and humanitarian organization founded in 1981 by the world-renowned humanitarian and spiritual leader – Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, believes in providing holistic, sustainable, long-term solutions to women through capacity-building programs and micro-entrepreneurship opportunities to impact them so that women become game changers fundamentally. Through its social projects, the organization aims to reach women nationwide. 

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