How empowHER is providing empowerment, sanitation and education to 65 villages in Panvel, Maharashtra

For close to two decades now, empowHER has been on a mission to improve rural women and girls' lifestyles. Started in 1993 by Nirbhay Jain as a charity called 'SKS Chakshu Foundation’ in memory of his mother, the NGO began its work by providing eye care in the rural areas of Panvel taluka near Mumbai. 

Recently, on Menstrual Hygiene Day on May 28, the organisation distributed sanitary napkins to tribal girls from Karjat taluka (Raigad district, Maharashtra). It also partnered with Raho Safe by Pee Safe, a sanitary pads manufacturer, to provide sanitary pads for a period of three months to 600 rural tribal girls from Karjat during the pandemic.

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Lessons from the pandemic  

"One of the key lessons we learnt from last year was the impact of the pandemic on adolescent girls. In addition to mental health problems due to social isolation, access to feminine hygiene products such as sanitary napkins completely stopped. Period poverty has always been a problem in India, but Covid has only intensified this problem,” says Anamara Baig, CEO, empowHER Foundation. 

She explains that since rural women have no way of accessing feminine hygiene products during lockdown, women and girls use cloths and rags during their periods. Often, these rags and cloth pieces are not properly stored, which causes infections and other health problems.

Bring gender equality 

Over the last two decades, the organisation's key initiative was setting up the Adolescent Girls Program (AGP), through which girls in the age group of 10-19 are equipped with critical life skills and given awareness on gender equality. EmpowHER currently works with over 600 girls across Karjat, and intends to scale the programme across Maharashtra. 

The NGO has also constructed over 2500 individual household toilets blocks across villages in Panvel and Karjat, and installed water purification plants in two villages of Panvel. 

Anamara says the NGO was involved in relief work throughout both waves of the pandemic. "There is a lot of aid available in the metro cities, however, healthcare infrastructure in rural parts is much more fragile. We decided to help small rural healthcare centres and hospitals treating Covid patients with supply of oxygen cylinders, beds, medicines and other Covid relief materials.” 

In 2020, empowHER also played an active role in providing COVID-19 related medical aid to healthcare workers in collaboration with a Mumbai-based Hospital. The charity donated 9,500 pieces of triple masks, 450 pieces of KN-95 masks, 450 pairs of gloves, 180 pieces of PPE kits, 50 pieces of sanitisers and six pieces of infrared forehead thermometers. 

“We are planning to continue our efforts in this direction, given the recent surge in COVID-19 cases in Maharashtra. Since we have already been providing medical and essential supplies to the needy during the pandemic, we feel that there is a need to include sanitary napkins as an essential commodity too,” says Anamara. 

The early days 

When Nirbhay first started the organisation over two decades ago, it was not without challenges. While he was able to procure funds through his Rotary contacts, Panvel wasn’t what it is today. Often, Nirbhay would have to wade through knee deep water and muck to reach some of the villages. For the villagers, farming was the only known source of livelihood. 

“We started off as a rural development organisation, where we undertook healthcare initiatives such as cataract operations for the poor, set up local health clinics and also infrastructural initiatives like building pakka roads and digging wells so that villagers could have access to water,” says Anamara. 

When they realised there were no educational facilities for children, the charity started a small school with about 40 children. Today, the school is a model school for not only that area, but all of Raigad district with over 450 students enrolled.

Anamara, who has a Masters degree from the University of Kent, was with Pratham Educational Trust prior to joining empowHER. 

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Growth as an organisation 

“Our evolution has been organic, and we have responded to the needs of the community every time. We started the self-help group (SHG) programme for local women, which became the mainstay for the organisation for over a decade. We created a network of over 2500 women through SHGs, empowering them financially. These women demanded proper sanitation facilities, so we were happy to construct over 2500 individual household toilets for them,” says Anamara. 

Reminiscing those early days of setting up processes in place, Anamara says convincing family members to allow women to step out of their homes and become independent was a herculean task. In 2016, since most of the work was related to empowerment of women, they rebranded themselves, and empowHER India was born. 

Catalyst of change 

"We selected empowerment of women as our focus area because it is my core belief that women are the catalysts for change. If we can empower our women, our communities will be transformed,” says Anamara. Finally, having worked for over a decade with adult women, the team realised that to establish long and lasting positive change, it was important to work with girls in their adolescent years. 

“What is learnt in adolescence in many ways shapes and defines who you become as adults. Many problems women face in adulthood can be traced back to the inputs they received as adolescents. Keeping this in mind, we strategically shifted our focus from older women to adolescent girls,” says Anamara. 

In 2020, the charity launched a new programme called “Empowering Adolescent Girls”, which focuses on teaching critical life skills and providing information on mental and physical wellbeing. The programme also introduced them to concepts related to gender and security.  

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The next steps 

Most of the funds received by NGOs from companies, corporates, high net worth individuals (HNIs) and Trusts for supporting their traditional programmes has been directed towards Covid relief efforts in 2020 and 2021. While this is the need of the hour, this has, understandably, put a strain on the functioning of most non-profits. 

“We are looking for financial aid to sustain and scale up our programmes,” remarks Anamara. 

Speaking about their future plans, Anamara says empowHER aims to build sanitation facilities in government schools so that girls do not drop out of school. 

“Especially once girls start menstruating, they drop out of school in large numbers due to lack of sanitation facilities. Additionally, over the next three years, we intend to scale up our programmes across all of Raigad district,” she says.