Hyderabad : MyChoices, empowering peacemakers

February 07, 2014 1 Comment

Empowerment means taking risks, giving up comfort and stepping out in boldness to do something that matters. Over the past few months I've gotten to know Elca Grobling, the founder of MyChoices a former Aussie finance manager who decided to move her entire family of 5 to Hyderabad, Andra Pradesh to make a difference for women that have suffered from domestic violence. Elca's passion for this cause is inherent in her zeal as she shares about the issues here in India that women face. In Andra Pradesh alone 30% of the violence enacted is against a woman. Most domestic violence cases are attributed to alcohol, especially in poorer families. Dowry, lack of education and child marriages also contribute to this. Her vision has been to train local women with counseling skills to go back into their own communities to be the "peacemakers". The hope is that these peacemakers can be safe points of contact for abused women so that they have an outlet to share the issues that they are facing. The peacemakers also provide access to onsite professional counselors at MyChoices. MyChoices also started a sewing unit recently in efforts to support the cause and provide good work to women within the communities they're reaching. We're excited about the development and may consider partnering with them in the coming year to produce new products. In light of this, we conducted a basic skills assessment in order to assess the readiness of the sewing unit. Calvina helped us conduct a simple eye-exam (while trying the encourage the women NOT to help each other was another battle.) We also gave the women some test samples to produce. Our hope is that we can see improvement over time and that they would be in position to produce export-ready product in the near future. I'm excited again to see the possibilities!