Volunteer work in India: Soumya Pande and Carmen de la Fuente, two sides of the same coin

Thank you, Cristina Negreira, for your wonderful report. Our congratulations on a job well done, which offers new and interesting insight into a major, current issue. We love it!

Cooperación na India: Soumya Pande e Carmen de la Fuente, dúas caras da mesma moeda

My visit to a literacy lesson

It's been a long wait, but finally here's a short video clip of the visit I made to the WLP class in Gulabgarh, where I was able to observe at first hand how the students of the project were progressing in their efforts towards achieving literacy and numeracy skills.

I was delighted and also moved when I saw this group of women doing something for themselves for a change, even if that meant reconciling their classes with babysitting for their grandchildren. Women never seem to stop looking after their families, so often forgetting to care for themselves.

I'm enthusiastic about this project and convinced that our efforts will help the women succeed in becoming literate, thus more independent and self-confident. The changes that take place in them will not only be for their own benefit, but also for that of their family and their community.

It was a true pleasure to share that short time with them and to check their notebooks too! 

Congratulations to these ladies - the students of the Women's Literacy Project, Gulabgarh!

Mari

Empowering women: IKEA partners with the UNDP

Recently, on the WLP Facebook page, we posted some important news for the rural women of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populated and least developed state: An important partnership between IKEA and the United Nations Development Programme may bring new hope to the women of the region.

For other, more isolated rural areas of India such as Paddar, small-scale efforts like the Women's Literacy Project of Gulabgarh are also working to empower women, so that they become key proactive members of their community.

There is still so much to be done in this emerging economy to help build women's skills, confidence, self-reliance and yes, even their financial literacy, that every initiative counts. Our project has begun preparing the ground toward empowerment by teaching our students the basic skills of reading, writing and numeracy.

Below is the article we published in Technorati with more information regarding this recent development.

Article first published as Empowering Women: IKEA Joins Efforts With UNDP on Technorati.

"Empowered lives. Resilient nations." The heading on the homepage of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) website is inspiring a new effort designed to benefit the rural women of India. With a focus on empowering women, the UNDP has partnered with IKEA Foundation in a project that aims to help build the self-reliance and financial skills of over 50,000 women in 500 villages in three districts of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populated (almost 200 m) but least developed state.
The partnership programme, to which IKEA has pledged €30 million, aims to promote this target group's financial literacy, thereby "strengthening their technical, institutional, managerial and financial skills so that they are able to play a larger role in the social and economic development in the villages."
Including rural women in its undertakings is an apparent attempt to broaden IKEA Foundation’s mission, until now focused mainly on helping the children of developing countries.

Read more: http://technorati.com/business/article/empowering-women-ikea-joins-efforts-with/#ixzz1sljf5s2q

Earth Day 2012: the WLP's pledge

The WLP Gulabgarh has made a pledge for Earth Day 2012 (Sunday, 22 April).

We dedicate this day to the students of the Women's Literacy Project, who are working so hard to become literate. These women, who are also striving to become proactive members of their community, will soon be able to make their own pledges and organize their own awareness campaigns about Earth Day. So today, we're focusing on environmental literacy.

Here are some interesting facts about why Earth Day Network created WAGE® (Women and the Green Economy):
    •    Women constitute more than half of the world’s population
    •    Women make 85 percent of all consumer choices
    •    Women are rising to key positions of power
    •    Women can lead the way to a sustainable green economy

Ladakhi sounds like this

We thought it worthwhile to dedicate a post to Ladakhi because many of the WLP students belong to the Ladakhi nation and speak one of more varieties of the language. Of course, in the WLP school, the women are learning "only" Hindi and English script, at least for now. On the other hand, children who attend the Himalyan Buddhist School (H.C.S.) in Gulabgarh also learn Bhoti, in addition to Hindi and English. How lucky they are to know so many languages!

Festival in Leh. Photo by Raul

But what is Ladakhi and where does this language come from? To answer this question, we've decided to share the information about Ladakhi contained in the Wikipedia; we couldn't have done a better job ourselves.

"The Ladakhi language (Tibetan: ལ་དྭགས་སྐད་, Wylie: La-dwags skad), now also called Bhoti, is the predominant language in the Ladakh region of the Jammu and Kashmir state of India, and is also spoken in Baltistan. Ladakhi is closely related to Tibetan, and the Ladakhi people share cultural similarities with Tibetans, including Tibetan Buddhism. 

Ladakhi has approximately 200,000 speakers in India, and perhaps 12,000 speakers in the Tibet region of China, mostly in the Changthang region. The language has several dialects including Ladakhi proper (also called Lehskat after the capital of Ladakh, Leh, where it is spoken), Shamskat, spoken to the northwest of Leh, Stotskat, spoken to the southeast in the Indus valley and Nubra, spoken in the north. The varieties spoken in Upper Ladakh and Zangskar have many features of Ladakhi and many other features of western dialects of Central Tibetan.

Ladakhi is usually written using Tibetan script with the pronunciation of Ladakhi being much closer to written Tibetan than most other Tibetan dialects."

In case you'd like to know what Ladakhi sounds like—at least a few consonant sounds from the language—we've included the short Keynote presentation below.

Making growth inclusive in an emerging economy

Here's a very interesting and inspiring interview with Chanda Kochhar, managing director and CEO of ICICI, India's largest private bank.

According to Ms. Kochhar, there is a greater consciousness towards gender neutrality in the emerging economies such as India, where increased growth opportunities mean new growth opportunities for the women of these countries.

It is also interesting to learn how certain aspects of traditional culture,  such as the joint family system, can coexist with development and even contribute to helping men and women work together and build understanding between them.

Imagine how much more can be achieved in a 100% literate country!