LEADERSHIP TRAINING FOR MINORITY WOMEN

The status of women in the country, particularly those from the disadvantaged sections of the society, is unfavourable.Most women in the rural areas suffer from double burden of carrying out less quantifiable work like cooking, fetching water, sending children to school along with agriculture labour, feeding cattle, milking cows etc., while the men folk perform defined activities like selling milk and grains produced by the household.

Women in the minority communities fare badly too. They  are not just a minority, but the ‘marginalized majority’ and are sidelined in decision making in the family, and usually cut off from full involvement in the workings of the community and form an equal share in the rewards from social institutions.

Empowering women, especially mothers, is even more important as it is in homes that she nourishes, nurture and moulds the character of her  offspring.

Keeping this in view, Ministry of Minority Affairs has initiated a scheme named as “Scheme for Leadership Development of Minority Women”

Objectives

• The objective of the scheme is to empower and instill confidence among minority women, including their neighbours from other communities living in the same village/locality, by providing knowledge, tools and techniques for interacting with Government systems, banks and other institutions at all levels.
• Empowerment of women from the minority communities and emboldening them to move out of the confines of their home and community and assume leadership roles and assert their rights, collectively or individually, in accessing services, facilities, skills, and opportunities besides claiming their due share of development benefits of the Government for improving their lives and living conditions.

The leadership training modules would cover issues relating to Leadership of women, Educational Programmes, Health and Hygiene, Swachch Bharat, Financial Literacy, Life Skills, Legal rights of women, Digital Literacy and Advocacy for Social and Behavioural change.

Qualities of leadership like organizational capacity, communicable skill, self development and articulation, communication and public speaking, organizing capabilities, negotiation and conflict resolutions etc. were also the integral part of the training. Group exercises and discussions were incorporated in the training modules to encourage active participation and make the scheme more lively and interactive.
Experts should be invited to speak on relevant issues as per the training programme.

After completion of the training SSS DKL staff visit the village/locality of the trainees periodically for providing nurturing / handholding service to the group of women imparted leadership development training so that they are guided in the use of tools and techniques taught to them and are able to extract the benefit from their efforts.

The duration of the training was for six days and each day will be of six hours. Each batch of 25 trainees were trained separately.

Printed training material in local language was prepared by the organization within the framework of training modules. To incentivize the training course, allowance/stipend to partially compensate/offset te loss of income/wage was be given to the selected women trainees along with a meal and crèche arrangement for their children while the training is ongoing during the day