On International Women’s Day Samhita celebrates women from the social sector. Indian women not just lead the nation from the political forefront and corporate boardrooms but also on the social front.
The social sector has no dearth for examples of women across cities, towns and villages and across all ages who have led and established successful social organizations.
(This is neither an exhaustive list nor a ranking in any way. The following is in alphabetical order of their surname)
Dr. Shelly Batra – Co-founder and President, Operation Asha
Dr. Batra is a renowned Senior Obstetrician and Gynaecologist, Advanced Laparoscopy Surgeon, and a best-selling Penguin author, in Delhi. Since 1991, Shelly has been working tirelessly for slum dwellers in Delhi, by providing not only free consultations and counselling, but also operating sick patients free of charge, and organizing a team of specialists to help her in this.
During her medical career she closely saw the devastation caused by diseases and the indignity that the poor faced in times of medical crisis. After several consultations and a lot of research together with her colleagues she realised there is a great need for Tuberculosis treatment in people from the marginalised community.
In 2005 Dr. Batra founded Operation Asha. Today, OpASHA is providing tuberculosis treatment and education services in 1412 slums spread over six states. It is the exclusive provider of treatment to some 3.5 million Indian citizens. Operation ASHA continues to experience success and grow, with global outreach on the horizon.
Sara Lizia D’Mello – Founder, Committed Communities Development Trust
Sara had thought of a career to work with children ever since she was 16, Sara started out as a high school English teacher.
She served as the principal of a high school for 13 years before dropping out to work with children outside the system. Thereon she has been working in the social sector for the past 24 years, and founded Committed Communities Development Trust(CCDT) in 1990.
CCDT is a voluntary, secular trust registered under the Bombay Public Trust Act of 1950. It works with rights-based approach in the field of Health and Education and therefore, aligns with efforts that seek to enable and empower the most vulnerable and deprived for a sustainable change in society.
For the last 20 years, CCDT has worked with marginalized communities living in the slums and Red-Light areas of Mumbai, engaging with people impacted by HIV/AIDS and with ensuing stigma, discrimination and deprivation. Children, especially orphan and vulnerable children, and women, including women in prostitution, have constituted the core of its integrated community development interventions.
Prema Gopalan – Founder, Swayam Shikshan Prayog
Prema completed her Masters in Social Work and her pre-doctoral study on women in the informal sector left her restless and she wanted to engage directly with such women. Since then, getting involved in three major natural disasters in India Prema has turned large scale crises into mass scale opportunities for development women in these communities. For the last two decades, Prema has scaled efforts to bring the poor from the margin to the mainstream partnering with the Government and then with large corporations to empower women at the bottom of the pyramid.
Today, Swayam Shikshan Prayog partners with over 72,000 women in self-help groups or networks in three states in India Maharashtra, Tamilnadu and Gujarat. Scaling up its microfinance and enterprise strategy by partnering with women’s groups/federations, SSP expanded its operations to 1600 villages across six districts in Maharashtra promoting a women’s leadership to operate savings and credit and insurance businesses and act as information/service providers. Mature women’s groups act as planners and advisors by working hand-in-hand with private service providers and government to improve health, water and sanitation services.
Arundhuti Gupta – Founder, Mentor Together
She is the Founder CEO of Mentortogether, a not-for-profit organization in Bangalore that connects underserved youth in urban Karnataka to volunteer "mentors," who fill gaps in academic and social support structures to empower such youth. She also works as a Research Associate at the Centre for Public Policy, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, where she studies youth un-employability and interventions to remedy that.
Arundhuti has a Master’s degree in Finance from the Manchester Business School, UK, where she was a 2008-2009 Commonwealth Scholar. She graduated top of the Bangalore University B.Com stream in 2007 and received 5 Gold Medals. She’s a StartingBloc Fellow, Boston, 2010; a Salzburg Trilogue Future Global Leader, 2009; and a Goldman Sachs Global Leader, 2006.
Sonal Kapoor – Founder, Protsahan
Sonal is a creative 25 year young social entrepreneur, who swears by the tremendous power of social networking in bringing about a positive social change. She juggled with Microbiology and Communications & Advertising for a while. She is passionate about making education a fun experience, using colours, stories and music for street children.
She founded Protsahan India Foundation as a development initiative for street children and their families recently and is working tirelessly to support the cause. Led by youth, Protsahan India Foundation has new set of ideologies being fresh, strong and determined altogether.
Their journey so far, has been more breathtaking than ever. With projects like ‘Educating India, Encouraging India’ (Protsahan Classrooms); ‘Remedial Teaching’ at construction sites/slums, Self employment under ‘Eco-Encouragement’ (an endeavour to make women independent by making eco-friendly diyas, other handicrafts, kurtas, etc. using lead free paints and green substitutes to generate livelihood opportunities); ‘Restoring Artisans Honor’ through the concept of Fair Trade, they pertinently try and make a change in someone’s life.
Nikita Ketkar – Founder, Masoom
Nikita worked in different capacities as a Journalist, Lecturer and Social Worker before qualifying for the prestigious Union public Services commission. After spending over 3 years in various administrative positions in DRDO, Air headquarters and NCC directorate, Nikita felt the urge to do something beyond and left the service to work for various NGOs.
She started Masoom in 2008 an organisation focused on improving the night schools. Masoom is presently working in 10 night schools of Mumbai. Masoom plans to reach out to 210 night schools by 2020 impacting 20,000 night school students in Maharashtra.
Annabel Mehta – Honorary Treasurer, Apnalaya
Annabel was born and brought up in England, the youngest of 4 children. After boarding school she went first to the Royal College of Music, which she left to enter the social work field. She completed her Diploma in Social Administration and came to India in 1966.
Annabel has been closely involved with Apnalaya since early 1973, and has been a volunteer ever since, serving as Treasurer as well as taking an active part in programme planning and management.
Apnalaya strives to achieve this through urban community development projects in Mumbai. Its role is one of empowerment: of encouraging ordinary men and women to believe in themselves and in their abilities to change their lives for the better.
Reema Nanavaty – Director, Economic and Rural Development, SEWA
Reema stepped out of the Indian Administrative Services for a year to come and directly work with the poor women members of the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA). As a manager, she developed the regional rural water supply scheme of Government of Gujarat and SEWA into an integrated water project, and made women central to water decisions. She stayed on with SEWA and expanded the project into an ongoing Women, Water and Work campaign of 1,00,000 women.
When elected by 2,84,000 members of SEWA as their General Secretary in the year 1999, Reema has expanded SEWA membership to new heights of 5,30,000 making SEWA the single largest union of informal sector workers in India.
Reema oversees the Economic and Rural Development efforts of SEWA. Currently she is replicating the Trade Facilitation Centre model in all the SAARC countries. Reema heads the ICT cell that has been established to connect information technological revolution with the rural women and using IT tools for organizing rural poor women.
Hina Shah – Director, International Centre for Entrepreneurship and Career Development
A young, energetic, qualified woman, with a desire to become independent, empowered and successful, Hina Shah faced many an odds when she decided to become an entrepreneur in 1976. With a belief that economic empowerment is the tool for overall empowerment of women, she piloted a development strategy in 1980, that viewed women as an active participant in economic development. In 1986, she transformed her vision into an initiative “International Centre for Entrepreneurship and Career Development (ICECD)” which today is recognized as “Centre for excellence” by United Nations. She has thus facilitated thousands of deprived women to become entrepreneurs all over India and the developing world.
By the year 2011, ICECD has reached out to 75000+ women directly and +1150 organizations in India, who have in turn trained 500000+ women. Hina institutionalized Women Economic Empowerment strategy in over 60 countries of Asia, Africa, Pacific and Caribbean, and lately, USA.
Chetna Sinha – Founder & Chair, MannDeshi Mahila Sah. Bank Ltd.
Chetna Sinha, an Ashoka Fellow, Yale World Fellow, works for social change in some of the poorest and most drought-stricken areas of rural India. She founded and is currently the president of a micro-enterprise development bank, its partner NGO, and a micro-business school for rural women. Together, these three organizations offer a holistic approach to helping women in rural areas – one that strives to enhance the economic empowerment and advancement of rural women through savings and lending, education, property rights, and social security initiatives.
MannDeshi is the first in its region to provide life, accident, hospitalization insurance and pension scheme for women and offers training in marketing, organic farming, financial literacy and veterinary medicine, among other topics. The bank has its origins in cooperatives organized by Gala Sinha to assist women in raising goats, selling vegetables and weaving. In addition, Gala Sinha works on behalf of landless laborers for property and water rights. She has succeeded in changing government policy and law regarding property rights for women.
Amita Vyas – Founder, Global India Fund
Dr. Amita Vyas is an Assistant Professor & Director of the Maternal & Child Health masters in public health program in the Department of Prevention and Community Health at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services, and holds an adjunct appointment with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
In 2007, Dr. Vyas founded the Global India Fund, a non-profit organization committed to inspiring global philanthropy by providing secure and transparent giving options to individual and corporate donors. GIF showcases the work of credible non-profit organizations in India and empowers donors to choose which organizations to support.
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