Women Empowerment

Youth, particularly girls, in villages across India faces serious problems of unemployment and underemployment. Limited access to employment opportunities and skills have long played a spoiler for these young girls, forcing them to take up daily wage work in the informal sector with inadequate social safety nets and poor living conditions.

At Dabur, we believe that Skill Development is a powerful agent of social transformation. Providing vocational training, we feel, will not only bridge the gap between skilled and unskilled labour but also help the rural youth with better employment and self-employment opportunities. Dabur's vocational training programmes, devised after detailed discussions with the community members and keeping in mind their specific needs and sensitivities, focus on developing soft skills that can help girls in these villages set up small businesses and become local entrepreneurs.

• Vocational Skills Training

We run Skill Development Centres in rural pockets of Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and Assam to create a pool of self-reliant young girls. These skills help them find employment in the fast-emerging services sectors or even emerge as social entrepreneurs in their respective villages. Under this programme, we offer training on a variety of income-generating vocational skills like:

• Cutting-Tailoring
• Beauty Care
• Handicraft making

In addition, we also provide entrepreneurship development and financial education to disadvantaged rural women, helping them develop the skills they need to build a business and manage money. Dabur has helped women form Self-Help Group (SHGs) and Joint Liability Groups (JLGs), and raise funds for running small businesses. The success of this initiative can be gauged by the fact that there has hardly been any default in repayment of bank loans. This initiative has gone a long way in raising the self-esteem of women in the hinterland.

151 rural girls pursuing Vocational Training at 7 Skill Development Centres

162 SHGs operational in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand

• Livelihood Programmes

Dabur has identified development of rural livelihoods as a focus area for its rural development programmes. Sustainable interventions are designed keeping in mind the specific needs of the poorest of the poor from the community basis need assessment surveys and local and regional needs. This project includes promoting agro-based livelihood programmes, developing piggery and goat-rearing to create robust livelihood opportunities to help rural households earn more and lead healthier lives.

We have been working with small farmers and rural communities in Uttar Pradesh and Assam in building capacities and capabilities to help create alternate avenues of livelihood. The projects work in sync with government development programmes and facilitate linkages to public services and schemes for the project beneficiaries.

In 2020-21, we trained women SHG members in four villages of Tezpur (Assam) on scientific management of pigs and goats, supporting them in setting up piggery and goat-rearing businesses. We also organized three-day training programme in a village in Pantnagar (Uttarakhand) on Mushroom farming for local SHGs and farmer groups, besides establishing a demonstration unit for mushroom cultivation and medicinal plants in Uttar Pradesh.

10 Women SHGs selected for Piggery

3 Women SHGs provided training on Goat Rearing