THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Shaifalika Panda, the convener of G20 EMPOWER, is keen on giving thrust to mentorship programmes for women. The Delhi-based Shaifalika, the CEO of Bansidhar and Ila Panda Foundation, has been working at the grassroots level in Odisha to uplift women for over a decade.
Shaifalika believes that when people have access to education, good health services and opportunities for livelihood development, their lives are transformed.
Shaifalika quit a successful entrepreneurial venture in 2007 to follow her calling and developed the framework for Project Unnati, an integrated self-help approach covering finance, livelihood, health, and Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH).
From humble beginnings, the mentorship group is slated to hit 25,000 members in the next two years.
The New York-based Global Health Consortium and United Nations Foundation recently recognised the project as the best-case practice.
Shaifalika’s integrated approach to empowering women has led to education and women’s health interventions at the grassroots level in over 250 villages in Odisha. Shaifalika told TNIE that in addition to teaching women life skills, her group also teaches them digital literacy.
“I have been trying to expand digital literacy throughout different verticals. What I have been seeing is that if we teach the women in these villages how to overcome the barrier in digital literacy, their lives will undergo a sea change,” Shaifalika said.
If Shaifalika joined the G20 panel at Agra to deliberate on ‘Achieving Universal High-Quality Skilling for Adolescent Girls and Women in Tech and Innovation’, at the Thiruvananthapuram session, she chaired on ‘Advancing Women’s Entrepreneurship through Mentoring & Capacity Building’. Shaifalika was also included in the working group on mentorship.