New Delhi: Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL) will empower five million women by 2020. The company is creating thousands of job opportunities in remote villages, especially for women, says HULs annual report 2018-19.
The company is continuously focusing and driving ‘Project Shakti,’ aims to financially empower and provide livelihood opportunities to women in rural India. The shakti entrepreneurs are given training for familiarisation with the company’s products and basic tenets of distribution management.
As per the reports, Project Shakti has 1,09,100 ‘Women Shakti Entrepreneurs’ known as ‘Shakti Ammas’across the country. This programme has helped Shakti Entrepreneurs gain selling skills, become self-confident, improve their self-esteem, learn to negotiate, and communication skills.
The company also aims to enhance livelihood by introducing various progrmmes including ‘Fair & Lovely Career Foundation,’ launched in 2017, which is a mobile platform designed to help women create an identity for themselves by providing them career guidance, skill-based courses, and training for job opportunities.
The platform addresses multiple educational barriers that girls and women in India face including limited access to transportation, lack of parental permission, and high cost of courses and inadequate availability of local institutes.
Over 600,000 women have enrolled to date on the platform, and approximately 200,000 women have accessed career guidance resources and online courses, and 50,000 women have opted for job-oriented tests and profile builder.
Apart from it, ‘Clinic Plus Scholarship,’ also provides an opportunity for mothers to help their daughters of class 5th to 12th who completes secondary education and fulfill their daughter’s dreams by supporting their education.
In 2018, over 124 girls were awarded a scholarship of 6,000 each.
The company is continuously working to promote gender equality, empowering women, setting up homes and hostels for women and orphans, setting up old age homes, daycare centres and such other facilities for senior citizens and measures for reducing inequalities faced by socially and economically backward groups.
