From: "Samson Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 23:56:41 +0530 (IST)
Subject: Space to women to showcase their success
Congrats Organizers of VI World Congress of Jesuit Alumni for selecting, among other things, the theme "Women's Empowerment".
I am an Alumni of Loyola College Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, involved in Social Work for the last 25 years.
I founded and lead 'GRAM' - Voluntary Organisation - that helped 34,707 women spread over 479 villages get organised. They run 17 Mutually Aided Cooperatives and invested their own share capital of Rs.88.3 million, borrowed Rs.125.51 and lent 322.35 to their members for various economic activities. Of course, their performance brought US the award from the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development the award for "The Best Performance for Facilitating linkage of Self Help Groups with Banks" for the year 2000-2001.
"Appreciative Inquiry" - a Development Training/Process these women representatives had in the last week of November 2002 had them sharing exciting achievements, far beyond the financial:
- They got a young widow remarried in a village!
- The women saved an 'untouchable' man being tortured at night by Police were rescued! They hired a farm tractor and travelled in big numbers to the Police Station and demanded that the injustice be stopped!
- They made a man who divorced his wife pay back the dowry she paid him (Rs.15,000) at the time of marriage. With the money, they got her remarried!
- Made the Police exhume the body of a murdered young man after 17 days and got police officer suspended from duty who tried to hush up the issue.
- One group went after a 'low' caste girl who ran away with a 'higher' caste boy - brought them back, bought all that they needed to conduct a wedding and setting up a family and conducted the marriage!
- In one village, they went on a fast for three days for the sake of uniting a young couple who were separated by dominating parents of the boy!
- In one village, they pooled their own donations of Rs.3000 in a day to bury a young victim of AIDS. - And they say they are in the process of settling the orphaned child.
- In another village, they went out of their way to accept an AIDS affected woman, who lost her husband to the disease recently, as their Group Member, when every one in the village avoided her!
It was pure joy to hear these women narrate their achievements. Is there space for these women to showcase their success in the alumni meet? And we are a gang of Alumni involved in their development here, in this Organization!
Samson
From=Samson.N
Association=GRAM Abhyudaya Mandali
Location=Dharmaram-503230, Nizamabad dt, A.P
Nation=India