Working towards Gender Justice
Deep in the forests of India where tribal communities live, our partner organisations found it hard to train women as community health volunteers to provide the health education and care that isolated rural communities needed.
For young tribal women, walking alone and unaccompanied by a man through forests and vast tea gardens to reach tribal hamlets was unimaginable and socially unacceptable.
Skillshare International development workers, including Dr Baliga who now runs our medical electives programme, developed a comprehensive curricululm to transform local villagers into effective health workers. Their outreach work has had a huge impact on the health of their communities, reducing cases of malaria and infant mortality and improving care for women before, during and after birth.
Today, the community health programme supported by Skillshare International boasts nearly 400 tribal women, including Jayanti Sahu (left), who have become active change agents in their communities.
In traditional fishing villages, women are often very low in the value chain and do not have influential access to markets. Male traders control the auctioning process and women with no assets are unable to obtain the much-needed credit to run small businesses.
After the South Asian Tsunami, Skillshare International worked with local partner organisations in India to break this cycle.
Training and challenging gender stereotypes enabled women to 
develop the skills they needed to market and sell fresh fish.
The women from this very patriarchal society learned to drive an insulated four-wheel vehicle and were given the support to establish sturdy federations with access to bank credit so that they could sell fish in much larger quantities.
Find out more about our project supporting women in Mozambique's small-scale fishing sector.
More about our Gender Justice programme...
- Read our Gender Policy.
- In September 2011, Laura Dignan returned from three months in Botswana where she volunteered with WoMen Against Rape on an ICS placement with Skillshare International. Find out more...
- Reframing women's rights as human rights: In December 2010, Skillshare International hosted Gender Justice Week. Find out more about the event and browse our photo gallery.
- Gender and land rights: Meet Basanti and find out how she overcame adversity to campaign for the rights of India's Tribal communities.