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Anjali Bose is a social activist working for woman awareness and empowerment at Jamshedpur since more than 30 years. She is also the president of “Mahila Kalyan Samiti (MKS)” which helps women fight for their rights against social injustice like dowry, family cruelty and sexual harassment of women. It also helps women become economically independent by giving them professional training, assists them in taking bank loans and starting their own initiatives. Our August issue carried an interview of her. More details on her work are also available on http://www.telegraphindia.com/1040831/asp/ranchi/story_3697470.asp

In the last few months, we have been interacting with her at her office. We found that her efforts of 30 plus years were at the verge of becoming obsolete, due to financial problems. The very first requirement to stop any further damage was financial aid so we extended our help. Since last six months we are primarily assisting her by providing monthly financial help. Along with this, we have been in constant touch with her, to understand her work. MKS is now working in full swing and it has once more started moving in a positive direction!!! It is going to start some new projects. The next challenge for us will be to make her work self-sufficient and sustainable.

With MKS, we are going to start a “Bridge course” for about 100 girls. It is a project under the Government of India (GoI) meant to re-enroll drop-out girls in school after a short term course through some NGOs. A high percentage of Indian girls drop out mostly due to economic and ritualistic causes. MKS is going to provide accommodation and formal education to these 100 girls for nine months. Along with this, we have planned to incorporate professional training (not included in GoI’s course curriculum) so that the girls can be more economically independent after completing the course:

· Sewing Machine: Since several years, Anjali Bose has been providing this training. She used it as a powerful tool to empower women to start their own initiatives. Now, we want to add some better equipment to make this training more profitable and at par with the modern cloth industry. Until now, women are working on traditional garments like salwar-kurta and frock, we want to make the process as well as the final products more modern. For this, we have to provide the latest machines. Also, to meet the requirement of providing this training to the girls being inducted, addition to the existing equipment is required.

· Beauty Parlor: We can provide training to the women to start their own beauty parlors. This is a booming business and it requires simple training to set up shop. It can provide the basic livelihood earning for women. Currently, there is no set-up available for this. We need to start from scratch and set-up a facility for training and arrange for professionals who can train the girls.

Awareness among Women: We are also trying to incorporate a course about basic women rights like “Protection against Domestic Violence” in this program. Anjali madam lectures regularly on Domestic Violence to various gatherings to make people aware of these laws. We are in the process of creating course material for this. It would be a simple pictorial hand book which women can refer for health and law issues. We are also trying to come up with posters for spreading awareness among women. Readers can help us in creating the reading material and posters.

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