Literacy India Sector 112, Gurugram, Haryana

The story of Indha goes back to 1996, when a Foundation called Literacy India was established as a non-for profit organization, with the objective of empowering underprivileged children and women and making them self-sufficient. Literacy India has endeavored to meet this objective through imparting education and developing a platform for the underprivileged children to achieve a variety of skills in performing arts, science, technology and vocation, giving the children basic human values, dignity of labor, self-belief and dreams with an ultimate goal of enabling them to support themselves and their families. Today, Literacy India operates through a number of projects dedicated to child and adult literacy and vocational training. Project Karigari aims at imparting vocational training for sewing, embroidery, driving, computers, beauty culture etc. Indha was born out of Literacy India, with a distinctly felt need to attain self sufficiency and sustainability as well as scale for their projects, especially with respect to Project Karigari – aimed at developing the Skills for artisans, a diminishing art form with the evolution of modern technologies. The need for Indha arose when women trained under Karigari found it difficult to support themselves financially due to restrictions imposed upon them regarding moving out of the village to find work. In 2004, production centers were set up in the villages of Daulatabad, Sarai and Bajghera to facilitate them in supporting themselves. Unlike private companies in the handicraft sector that align themselves with skilled workers, as an organization, Literacy India and Indha, invest in the training of artisans and in ensuring their well being by providing higher wages, medical benefits, financial education and good work conditions.