Center for Women's Empowerment & Gender Equality

New Gender Conversations Workshop Series: Trainers Radhika Shetty & Meenu Prakash from the Center for Women's Empowerment & Gender Equality facilitated another Gender Conversation Workshop series for faculty at Amrita Hospital, Kochi. Sessions the topics of gender discrimination, the role and influence of media, and how language matters were conducted for Senior Faculty from the Amrita School of Dentistry on October 28, 2022.

The Gender Conversation Workshop series addresses the issue of gender equality, masculinity, and mental health at the individual, household, and community levels. The program had successfully trained 25,000 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) jawans/soldiers through gender sensitization workshops in 2021.

The sessions rejuvenated participants by bringing awareness and dialogue on gender-related topics in professional settings. Dr. Mahija J, oral pathologist and senior research member at Amrita Hospitals commented, "I walked into this room one person and I am leaving this room a different person. Thank you."

Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham has been sanctioned to implement the SANKALP project by the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) and the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC). The project mainly focuses on training & certifying 4500 women Self-Help Group (SHG) members in a vocational trade.

The Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship ( ), Government of India in collaboration with the World Bank has created the “SANKALP” project ( Acquisition and Knowledge Awareness for Livelihood Promotion) which aims at improving and boosting short term skill training programs for long term benefits through strengthening institutions, bringing in better market connectivity and inclusion of marginalized sections of the . is being implemented to ensure efficiency and governance in skill development.

The target audience for the project is the Self-Help Groups (SHGs) in the selected 9 states of India (Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana, Uttarakhand, and Himachal Pradesh), its leaders, members, and along with them it will also benefit their children and other family members. The project also tries to incorporate the Transgender community and other minority groups wherever possible. The project will enlighten not only members of the community but also the entire community within and beyond.

The first mobilization meeting of the SANKALP project was initiated on May 4, 2022 with a cluster-level meeting with the leaders from two different locations (Harripad and Cherthala) in the Alappuzha district. Discussions were conducted with the cluster leaders about the project, they were explained about the different courses that the project offers. Q/A sessions took place to collect information about prospective new courses that they are interested in.

The SANKALP team also completed the 4-day Pre-Training Workshop for the SHG leaders. The entrepreneurial workshops were conducted at Harippad, Alappuzha, where two sessions took place with 56 Amrita Sree SHG leaders.

For our May meetings, Ms. Sharanya Shriram, led engaging sessions with the women. On the last day of the session the discussions began with entrepreneurial topics like sales and marketing, resilience and risks in a business and leadership quality for a budding entrepreneur. Several hands-on activities also took place which were very motivating. For example, several SHG women commented that the experience of sitting in a classroom again after a long time and holding a microphone and speaking in a group gave them confidence to further pursue business prospects. Overall immense motivation for the was delivered through this workshop and a great kick start for the SANKALP project.

Happy Independence Day! salutes the Nation on our 75 years of Independence!

We are delighted to celebrate the success of our field facilitator, Anjana from Nala Village Uttarakhand. She was certified as the " Gender Sakhi" after the completion of a key government training organized by the NRLM themed "A Step Towards Gender Equality" at Rudrapur. Two women from each district were selected for this training and a total of 30 women attended. The four day workshop took place August 1 - 4 at Rudrapur.

Anjana’s success story did not come easily. She first joined the field team deployments in 2014, when Amma decided to start disaster relief work in Uttarakhand. Since then, she has actively coordinated community engagement and vocational training in Rudraprayag District.

At first, Anjana was silent and felt hopeless about gender-based violence toward women and inequalities she herself faced personally. Unfortunately, economic benefits were not enough to get her out of misery, and many other women were also suffering from similar issues.

As our center started to provide legal awareness and counseling on gender-based violence, she began opening up and using her own voice to speak up, inspire others and make a difference. She found the courage to make a change and became a paralegal volunteer with the civic judge and Nirbhaya advocates. She has reached out to thousands of women and has supported many survivors of domestic violence.

In addition, she is a resource person for hundreds of women's economic groups, facilitating discussions with banks and government officers.

After taking part in a training with the large scale program of the Government of India for women's empowerment, NRLM, she is now a Gender Master Trainer.

As women like Anjana continue to empower themselves and others, we hope to see a chain reaction that will lead to stronger, more resilient communities where women are able to lead the way to a better world.

Please join us in congratulating her and wishing her the best in her service to women.

Watch Anjana’s message for “Orange the World” a campaign for Human Rights Day against domestic violence: https://youtu.be/v2ky_DqKZmY

We are very pleased to announce a Call for Papers for the International Conference on Advancing Women's Empowerment through Systems Model Expansion (AWESOME) (March 3-5, 2022)

Our Center for Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality (CWEGE) is inviting papers from academics, policymakers and practitioners on system thinking for women’s empowerment to be presented and published in the proceedings of the conference.

Conference Timeline
October 22, 2021: Call for Papers issued
Nov 28, 2021 (11:59 PM IST): Deadline for submitting abstract papers and workshop or tutorial sessions proposals
December 19, 2021: Paper Acceptance notification
December 29, 2012: Paper Guidelines issued
February 7, 2022 (11:59 PM IST): Final Submission of full Papers, Workshops and Tutorial agendas
March 5th, 2022: 3-day Virtual Conference (held from India)

Link: https://ammachilabs.org/awesome-international-conference/

“Human existence has no meaning without spiritual values. It is these values that extend the scope of spirituality into all areas of life, all spheres of action, including science. In this regard also, the blending of science and spirituality — technology and compassion — is the need of the hour: Science and technology must be used to uplift of the poor and destitute. They must progress with respect for the planet and all of its creatures.” ––Amma (Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi)

Join us on Facebook Live for a webinar between women entrepreneurs and institutional experts to discuss the Priority Action Roadmap for Women's Economic Empowerment in the wake of COVID-19 (PARWEE). This event comes after a series of interviews and workshops where women entrepreneurs have been sharing their responses and lessons learnt from COVID-19. Hosted by the Center for Women’s Empowerment & Gender Equality. Tuesday September 15, from 3:30 PM - 5:30 PM IST. Streamed live on Facebook! (find your local time here: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html)

UNESCO Chairs Four Year Progress Report - 2016-2020 Four Year Progress report of Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham's UNESCO Chair in Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (India) from 2016-2020 including detailed future plans.

Farouk El-Baz Center for Sustainability and Future Studies (FECSFS) at the British University in Egypt (BUE) and Civilizology LLC, USA are hosting a virtual think tank event on https://www.facebook.com/civilizology/live featuring nine world-class intellects speculating on their views of the World and our resilience post COVID19 - Register for the event on https://civilizology.org/virtual-think-tank