Spark Minda Foundation has released a booklet ‘Blaze the Trail’ featuring passionate women entrepreneurs and their successes. The first edition of the entrepreneur booklet brings the journeys of some of these micro rural women entrepreneurs.
Spark Minda Foundation skill development programs aim to elevate the motivation, training, and counseling of rural women to be independent and financially strong. One of the most urgent needs is to identify a variety of small-scale project opportunities that women can take up.
It is required by the fact that new women entrepreneurs in the region – due to their limited educational background, opportunities, and capabilities – need the help of support organizations to identify the scope.
The time has come for an effort to imbibe a spirit of enterprise, self-dependence, creativity and high goals among women in rural areas. Investing in opportunities for women has a tremendous economic and social impact. Moreover, women’s economic empowerment not only promotes greater economic development but greater equality and opportunity. It helps not only in creating local jobs for women and also in establishing women as role models.
“In the first edition of our entrepreneur booklet, we bring you the journeys of some of these effective rural women, who have established themselves as entrepreneurs.”, says Sarika Minda, Chairperson, Spark Minda Foundation.
Aakarshan simply means the quality of being desirable. Initiated in 2013, it aimed to impart meaningful and employable skill development pieces of training to the communities where people’s lives, especially its women and youngsters would have otherwise remained held up from being played out a whole lot better.
What began with basic computer training has over the years expanded itself to professional courses in Tally, Spoken English, Beauty & Wellness and Cutting-Tailoring. It reached hundreds of women in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh during the initial years, eventually developing several support centres in the states of Uttarakhand, Haryana, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.
Aakarshan today has turned 8, and has helped the lives of over 1000 women turn into something more delightful than what is generally thought to be possible.
“Blaze the Trail” captures such stories of impact in the lives of 500 women across the country. They speak different languages and represent diverse cultures, but are united by a common equation of setting a compelling impact among their communities with the acts of performance and income.
“Blaze the trail” marks an important milestone in our journey to skill, educate and empower women of rural India. This book is not where our dream to positively impact lives reaches its end goal but gains momentum to expand its horizon”, said Praveen Karn, Head CSR, Spark Minda
“As we reach this milestone, we pledge to reach more women, widen our scope, touch the rural pockets of India and emerge with skilled and empowered women. For women are the driving force, not only in their homes but also for the nation, their development ought to have a much wider and deeper impact on the overall societal and economic development.”, he added.
Spark Minda Foundation (SMF) is incorporated under Section 8 of the Companies Act and is the CSR wing for the Spark Minda group companies to undertake CSR programmes since 2014.
“Blaze the trail” acts as a pledge and commitment to increase our efforts tenfold and reach thousands of lives in the years to come. The book is also an ode to all such women of the world who can be game changers if given a little more opportunity to develop and perform.
“We have high hopes of winning the hearts of our readers. Each story in this booklet is a journey towards empowerment, embracing liberty and gaining stability. We express our gratitude to our team for their determination to compile such huge information and bring it to paper, and that was collected with the help of hundreds of phone calls, multiple rounds of data verification and field visits in the last two years.”, the foundation said.
“The central idea behind any improvement is to enhance Aakarshan, that is, to become more delightful. It’s our promise to continue working for women so that they are able to stand tall even when ignorance & poverty are found lurking just a breath away.”, the report said.
(India CSR/August 26, 2021)
(CopyRight@IndiaCSR)
