This summer I had the privilege to start up my own family foundation with the help of the two women in my family- my mother and grandmother. The main aim of the Chanana Welfare Foundation is to promote and spread Women Empowerment and importance of education for children and women across rural parts of India. We set up a vocational centre in July in the district of Roorkee where women come learn to stitch and sow in order to use these skills to become financially independent – promoting Women empowerment. We also visited schools in the districts of Roorkee and Bawal where we conducted sanitation workshops with the children to discuss and help them understand the importance of personal hygiene. Taking this concept further, we constructed four toilets in four separate remedial educational centers in Bawal. We decided to build these toilets not only to teach the children how to effectively use them but also to prevent them from using the fields as their toilets. This has actually has an added benefitted as the girls do not have to leave class half way through to go home to use the toilet and can finish their class without any interruptions.

I am honored and proud to be a part of this foundation and will strive to further empower and augment the status of rural women in my country through education and skills training.