Enhancing women's voices in rural India

As early marriage of girls remains a common feature in rural India due to poverty and lack of education, here is a novel initiative to check the trend.

The initiative, being taken up by Freedom From Hunger, an international development organisation working on combating chronic hunger and poverty, aims to give adolescent girls in India meaningful options to realise their potential, including alternatives to early marriage.

Nike Foundation, an organisation supported by Nike Inc., has granted $1 million to FFH to support the innovative three-year programme.

"This grant supports FFH's long-term commitment to pioneering programmes that will aid in enhancing girls' and women's voices in rural India," FFH president Christopher Dunford said.

This grant will support the development and distribution of FFH's Learning Conversations -- a simple and powerful innovation in dialogue-based adult education through a low-cost and sustainable network of service centres, reaching millions of girls in some of the poorest rural communities of the poorest states of India, including Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal.