Empowering Women

The Society of St Vincent De Paul (SSVP),held an open market on Sunday in a bid to help women from economically backward families. The market was held at the premises of St Ignatius Church in Khadki and had 12 such stalls put up. Alex Pereira,president of the SSVP Khadki chapter,said,“We are doing this to mainly help the poor families that have been adopted by us to be able to earn some extra money. The 12 stalls have various products that range from home made pickles and masalas to candles and house cleaning liquids.” In addition the products that were nominally priced between Rs 10 to Rs 100,there were food stalls selling a variety of snacks. Pereira informed that they plan to make this a regular feature on Sundays. “We were not sure about the success of the model and hence had a trial run on Sunday but since the response has been good,we will increase the frequency of the market to every fortnight soon.” The market also featured stalls selling pots and lampshades. Over the next few weeks,the SSVP members will try and introduce a larger range of items at the market.

Honour Call

Human Achievers Foundation recently presented its ‘International Women’s Achievers Awards’ to those women who have made a mark in their field of work. Women from various walks of life were felicitated and honoured on the occasion. Senorita Isaac,founder of the Human Achievers Foundation,said,“International Women’s Achievers Awards is an attempt to bring women empowerment in India and to celebrate womanhood. This was a small effort to enhance their progress,status and position in the society.” This year,the awards went to Supriya Sule,Valerie Freese,Anu Aga,Manisha Sanghvi,Lila Poonawalla,Arnavaz Damania,Kruti Jain,Lubna Salim,Tarita Shankar,Gulshan Gidwani,Usha Poonawalla,Punam Kashyap,Moushmi Sanas,Divya Khosla Kumar,Jaswinder Lamba,Satya Sinha,Isha Bhandari,Virdhi Singh,Laurina D’Cruz,Asha Serlekar,Sheetal Salian and Neelam Seolekar.