#weforwoman

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KETTO shares 7 Stories That Define Women Empowerment

Ketto is an online crowd funding space for social causes and is based in Mumbai, India. It was founded on 15 August 2012 by Varun Sheth along with film and theatre actor Kunal Kapoor. In its first year, Ketto raised INR 4.5 million for 18 campaigns. Their causes ranged from education to women’s empowerment. 

Spokesperson: 

Varun Sheth:  

Varun is the Founder and CEO of Asia's largest crowd funding website "Ketto". He has a background in finance and a foregrounding in genius. He was born and brought up in Mumbai; did his schooling in Jamnabai Narsee School and college in Narsee Monjee. Having always been interested in the financial sector, he went on to do a couple of financial programs that included chartered financial analyst (CFA) and financial risk management (FRM).

Kunal Kapoor: 

Kunal was born in Mumbai to a Punjabi family whose origins are in Amritsar. He is a film and theater actor by profession achieving many successes till date including Rang De Basanti, Aja Nachle etc. He's also super clever and has a heart of pure, sunshiny gold which landed him into social work. Mostly, known to be a tech geek, he co-founded Asia's largest crowd funding platform called Ketto, which raises money for social and individual causes. Till date, the platform has raised close to 400 million rupees.

KETTO has shared 7 Stories That Define Women Empowerment with us,

1. Kavita Gonsalves and Charlene Vaz

Image Courtesy: mumbaimag.com

Take a few bakers, mix a few noble causes, add chocolate, red velvet and whipped cream to it. What do you get? Except from the revelation that we have terrible cannibalistic baking skills, you get the super awesome Bake Collective.

Since their inception in 2012, they’ve been making a delicious difference to a huge range of causes by raising over 7 lakhs as of 2015, May. It’s like, buy red velvet cupcakes and help buy teaching material, buy strawberry cheesecakes and fund small town women entrepreneurs, buy monster cookies and get disabled children toys to play with. They’re literally making the world a sweet place to live in, aren’t they?

Isn’t this the best form of charity ever?

2. Anita Ahuja:

Anita wanted to do something about the waste crisis of Delhi; she came up with an ingenious idea that ended up creating employment opportunities and source of income for around 300 unskilled workers.

Image Courtesy: blogcms.outlookindia.com

With her NGO Conserve, she creates bags, diaries, raincoats, umbrellas out of plastic waste through a process that she invented herself. She also patented this innovative process that “up-cycles” waste plastic to Handmade Recycled Plastic, known as HRP.

Anita sure knows how to club the principles of enterprise and social service.

3. Karishma Mehta

What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when we say ‘a well captured picture with warm stories of dreams, failures, and hopes on Facebook? Yes, you’re right! We’re talking about the wonderful Humans of Bombay page founded by Karishma Mehta.

Image Courtesy: thebetterindia.com

Along with establishing a powerful connection with the reader, she has also gone out of the way to help people. Not many people are aware of this but Karishma has started several campaigns on Ketto to support causes and has raised an overwhelming amount of funds for the causes she supports. Check out one here. With tremendous reach and a lot of support, it’s super amazing to see her use it for a greater purpose.

We think it’s brilliant to see a community go beyond sharing stories and create amazing ones.

4. Shaheen Mistri

We take a lot of pride in being associated with Shaheen Mistri, founder of Teach for India. She has raised funds on Ketto several times. This woman is ensuring the future generations don’t stop at the fifth grade.

Image Courtesy: outlookbusiness.com

She’s responsible for the nationwide movement of eradicating educational inequality by bringing the brightest college graduates and professionals back to classrooms! Not just that, she started her NGO Aakanksha at the age of 18, to make an attempt to maximize the potential of children belonging to low-income families. She realizes how every child has the power to achieve great things if given the right opportunities.

By raising the quality of education, she’s creating responsible citizens for India.

5. Mahita Fernandez

One night Mahita woke up because of her grumbling belly and this precise incident is how she came up with the brilliant “Feed Your Neighbour”. She realized how there are many out there who don’t have the privilege of just walking into their kitchens and opening the fridge when they experience a hunger pang.

Image Courtesy: bangaloremirror.com

Sometimes even the smallest of the insights can lead to a movement.

With “Feed Your Neighbour” on Facebook, during the festive period of Dusshera, Mahita invites people in Benguluru to cook 5 extra meals which are later picked and distributed by a fleet of enthusiastic volunteers. This simple concept has pulled off a logistical miracle by managing to feed 1,22,937 meals to the hungry.

6. Amla Ruia

She’s rightly called the “Water Mother” of the formerly known dry state of Rajasthan. While the government was helping them with water tanks, Amla started researching and planning on how she could build a sustainable solution to help people. And because of her idea of building check dams, Rajasthan is a different place altogether today.

Image Courtesy: womensweb.in

The farmer incomes have increased and become steady because they are now able to grow 3 crops in a year as opposed to 1, larger incomes have led to purchase of transport amenities like 1 to 2 motorbikes per family and 4-5 tractors per village, migration to cities has reduced and believe it or not, it has also affected the marriage pattern, people are willing to marry their daughters there.

With her Aakar Charitable Trust, she wishes to take this to other states as well.

7. Ria Sharma

During her final semester in Leeds College of Arts, she watched a movie called Saving Face and that moved her so much she decided to do something about the heinous crime of acid attacks by helping the survivors.

Image Courtesy: womennow.in

On receiving immense support from her professors, she travelled to Bangalore to meet some of the victims as a part of her project that required creating a documentary. Soon this project evolved into a massive revolution called Make Love Not Scars.

Under her leadership, the NGO has now spread awareness, raised funds for the treatment of victims, and even made attempts at implementation and amendments of laws with respect to acid attacks.

It’s great to see how many lives these women impacted with their ability to identify a problem, think of a solution, believe in it and most importantly ACT on it!

All you wonderful women out here, bring your beautiful ideas to life.

Identify your cause and get started with a campaign on Ketto. Maybe you’ll be the next woman we’ll be talking about.

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International Women's Day: Hiral Pathak Mehta, who has travelled from the most struggling childhood to the successful life

"Woman is the most beautiful creation of god. She is the mixture of love, happiness, politeness, joy. She can be angry but soft at heart, shy but naughty by birth, simple but dimpled by look. Woman is the powerhouse of the family. If there is a power cut, we can’t survive for a while. You may feel the same when she is not around. Or I can say every home, every heart, every feeling, every moment of happiness in incomplete without her. Woman is the source of completion or continuer to complete the world.

"For me, it’s not just the special day to celebrate on 8th of March, but I am celebrating each day with the TAG line, 'I am a woman, and I proud to be myself. I am the only source to rotate the world. I am the God’s finest creation who is blessed with the ability to bring a life into the world. No one can play the role of mine and yes I am the one. I always pray to God to make me female child in my every life.'"

Celebrating Womanhood,

"I just want to celebrate this day to make the people more aware of the importance of womanhood. Children should be inspired to respect her more. Let's celebrate it everyday to give her love, joy, peace, appreciation, care and respect. I think this is the right way to do something for her. It’s the real celebration for her. Thank her for everything she is doing for you. She can be a mom, a wife, a daughter, a daughter-in-law. She chooses to play all her roles superbly. She never demands for leave, she is doing her job without salary. MAke sure we ask her to sleep, to eat, to breathe with peace.

"Let's try to understand her, make her happy, give her more love, or make her smile. This is the real celebration. Celebration doesn’t only mean to cut the cake, wear designer clothes, and go for dinner. It just takes a ‘thank you’. Some words of love and appreciation are more precious than any other celebrations."

Woman in the Changing World,

"I would like to see a broader view when we talk about the women in the workforce- I have heard many talks focused on women in technology or women in the corporate sector. Many women are properly organised or we can say, properly handling corporate world as well as cultural world. On the earth, the women are blessed with the ability to balance the entire family as well as the corporate culture.

"I see a woman as the heart of body or the centre point of the earth where we can live, breathe, and feel safe.

"In this changing world, many of people, families, and religions have changed their view about woman. They allow her more education, they allow her to work, to wear what she likes. I believe, 'Women will change the world definitely in positive sense.'"

Describing herself as a woman,

"My most favourite thought: 'Without woman you cannot imagine the world to be continued…' When I was born, I became my father’s princess, my mother’s queen. Then I became my husband’s lover and a daughter-in-law who is more than a daughter to those parents who have not given me birth but yes who have given me space in their heart, in their home, in their world. Now I am a mom to my kid and yes I am trying to play every role better than yesterday.

"Every day, I am chasing my dreams and trying to complete it, every day wake up with new hopes, with new thoughts. Every day, I try to help at least one person in a day, try to make people smile more.

"I feel proud as a woman. I love myself. I love to introduce myself as the woman who has equal place and voice. I am the powerhouse of my Home."

Stay tuned for more stories.

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International Women's Day: Priti Munshiani, an Edupreneur and a proud owner of 8 schools

On this International Women's Day, we want to thank all those wonderful women who have been the precious part of C4N India and who have inspired people with their incredible stories. And to celebrate them, we have them here to talk about this very special occasion and their views on this.

Priti Munshiani, an incredible enthusiastic edupreneur

Born in a middle-class family in Ahmedabad, Priti was Montessori trained and completed B. Ed and had 3 years of teaching. After her son met with a fatal accident at his school due to carelessness of the authority, she decided to have her own school.  

From there her journey started as an edupreneur in 2014.

Priti has got National award and many awards from Zee education group for her contribution . Now she is a proud owner of 8 schools. She has teacher training institute named IMTTI . More than 200 teachers and edupreneurs are trained under her.

"I am very lucky as God has fulfilled all my wishes," she believes.

On this International Women's Day, Priti says, "Women's day is a day of Celebration of women's existence on this earth. I would like to celebrate this occasion by appreciating the work done by eminent women of my town so that other women arr motivated to contribute and give back something to the society."

On the major role of Women in this changing world, Priti says,

"Already the women are on the path of changing this world . They are excelling in all the fields. Major role of women is to mould the young minds . From birth, the mother is involved in bringing up the child . The mother plays the major role in moulding the future citizen. Women's involvement in education sector can do wonders."

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International Women's Day: Savi, Bruised Passports

On this International Women's Day, we want to thank all those wonderful women who have been the precious part of C4N India and who have inspired people with their incredible stories. And to celebrate them, we have them here to talk about this very special occasion and their views on this.

Savi, Bruised Passports

Savi, a PhD in English Literature started Bruised Passports 3 years ago with Vid to document their experiences of travelling around the world.

Savi and Vid are a journalist / photographer duo who conceptualised Bruised Passports as a unique mélange of travel tales and fashion for the road. They were born in New Delhi but have spent significant periods of time in Singapore and London. They quit their jobs in London in 2015 and are now on a round-the-world trip, having travelled to over 500 cities in 60 countries. They have driven with zebras in South Africa, cavorted with Bedouins in the Sahara, befriended soldiers in Israel, and partied in a nuclear bunker in the Czech Republic. Bruised Passports chronicles their adventures from around the world and inspires people to ditch the clichés while travelling to new places.

On this International Women's Day, Savi says,

"I feel that women's day shouldn't just be celebrated by women. It should be an excuse to pay homage to a world where gender stereotypes don't exist, by men and women alike. It's the twenty-first century and all of us should be proud to be feminist. We should make a conscious effort to question convention, celebrate individuality, and assert equality. I firmly believe that true equality in relationships is the shortcut to true happiness”

To know more about Bruised Passports, visit www.bruisedpassports.com

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