Aparajita: my courage, my flight

Aparajita means the unconquered. On 2 October 2015 the Foundation gave that name to a gathering of village women in Bareilly — Aparajita: mera hausla, meri udaan, my courage, my flight — on the theme of women's education and the road to empowerment.

About three thousand women from some fifty villages of the Bareilly region came. The programme was run by women associated with the Foundation: the eye specialist Dr Anita Ajay, Dr Poonam Singh and Smt. Inderpreet Kaur of MJP Rohilkhand University, and the gynaecologist Dr Shalini Maheshwari. Besides the talks, the women were enrolled in the Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti life insurance scheme and took home packets of vegetable seeds for their kitchen gardens, the first round of a distribution that reached 3,500 families that season.

The morning had begun with a Swachhata Abhiyan: on Gandhi Jayanti, volunteers and students cleaned the lanes and grounds around the venue before the women arrived.