Gender Equality is one of the key global goals(SDG 5) framed by the United Nations inorder to empower women (also other genders) and thereby create a gender balanced socio-economic- political scenario. One can understand the gravity of this discrimination when we parallely look at its impact in different sectors be it politics, education, business, healthcare or anything else. As per a report by the UN, 74.6% of the girls who enroll for primary education do not end up pursuing their higher studies whereas the workforce has only 27.4% of the total female population. It is even more shocking to know that 1 in 3 Indian women have faced some form of sexual violence in their life time. This is a reflection of nothing but a skewed gender setup that is deep rooted in our society.

Fighting for Gender Justice isn’t an easy one. Gender discrimination is spread across religious, cultural and societal practices that it becomes a sensitive yet critical issue to handle. Our solution was to take one step at a time- Sensitize and then Empower. We decided to handhold the women and girls from underserved communities and go through a process of unlearning gender and body stereotypes to build a sense of confidence, independence and freedom. We also work with vulnerable groups of women to make them aware about Gender Based Violence(GBV), menstrual health and more. Last but not the least, we truly believe in what empowerment can do to make a self-reliant household and thereby support small scale women led organizations in need.

The objective of our campaign- Pucho Sakhi/Seekho Sakhi is three fold in nature- Learn, Practice and Share. The awareness classes are to provide a wholesome idea about opportunities and services that FinTech offers and thereby availing the same. Another crucial aspect of the same was to understand loopholes in the system such as online/offline frauds and scams. Our partner organizations play an important role here in order to support the beneficiaries as well as to encourage them to practice the knowledge that they have acquired. The third objective has a larger goal of reaching more audiences through empowered “community leaders” who can disseminate information.

Understanding the dire need for intervention, we are engaging with underserved communities through our local partner NGOs and are trying to bridge the education- learning gap. This year, we launched multiple projects to tackle the same, namely:
* I have Doubt Campaign- with Bhaiyya Didi Mentors
* Vigyaan Videobook series
* TechforGood- Crowdsourcing Campaign

These campaigns are targeted towards those students who are facing difficulty to learn due to issues such as interrupted schooling, lack of trained teachers, low access to digital devices, poor internet connectivity, difficulty to purchase internet packages, less support from family etc.

When compared globally, India tops in the Youth population number with over 356 million young citizens. Unfortunately, only 37% of this crowd are able to find employment. With the outbreak of Covid-19 virus and the lockdown which followed , low-income communities faced severe setbacks being unable to modify their skills with the new needs and requirements. Apart from individuals, small scale businesses and social enterprises struggled with strategic and skill-based transformation. Is the gap broadened by the pandemic something that can be never filled? What is it that we can do?

We launched the campaign “ Youth Employability” by mid 2021 to reach the youth who are struggling to upskill themselves with the fast paced world. The objective was also to connect with small-medium sized social enterprises that are upskilling youth or are providing livelihood for them. We identified key areas of capacity building interventions namely, 1.Transformation 2. Upskilling 3. Promotion.