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 Every year before March 8, big cutouts, posters and banners will be on display all over the city to celebrate International Women’s Day. There would be public functions to mark the occasion where female celebrities would be facilitated with much fanfare. Paparazzi would click their pictures from every possible angle, the tabloids and dailies would flash them on the front pages as if to say ‘do you know the Pope is Catholic’!
Contrary to these entire hullabaloos, a very small function was jointly organised by the Centre for Development Research and Training (CFDRT), East West Center Alumni (EWCA) Association Chennai Chapter and Experiment in International Living (EIL) Chennai Chapter at the office of the CFDRT, Chennai, on March 8, 2007.
At this function, there were women volunteers from the Anakavur block of Tiruvannamalai district in Tamil Nadu who shared their valuable experience working for the empowerment of women. These women had formed women’s groups in their villages, and were focusing on areas such as health, nutrition, school dropouts, water, hygiene and sanitation to bring about a change in their social milieu.
Four women volunteers made individual presentations explaining the work they had been doing for women’s upliftment. They described their experiences about how they formed three groups comprising women, adolescent girls and children and what they were doing for their development.
Issues such as antenatal care, institutional delivery, neonatal and postnatal care, exclusive breastfeeding, nutrition, monthly weighing and growth monitoring, referral and immunisation formed their agenda of women empowerment.
They also briefed the audience on how they were building awareness about the Right to Information Act, organising cooking demonstrations to popularise locally available, low-cost and no-cost nutritious foods and building awareness on the rights of women, etc.
 “These are grassroots-level workers, very simple women, very down to earth who have selflessly and silently been working for the uplift of society,” said P Subramaniyam, managing trustee, CFDRT Trust; Secretary of the EWCA Chennai Chapter and Community Chairman of the EIL Chennai Chapter, while welcoming the guests of the function and introducing the volunteers to the audience.
P M Belliappa, president, EWCA Chennai Chapter, in his presidential address, praised the good work done by the CFDRT Trust and mentioned about his earlier associations with the erstwhile North Arcot district of Tamil Nadu of which he was the collector in the ‘70s.
“I am aware of the backwardness of the Anakavur block and, therefore, full of appreciation for the excellent work done by the volunteers, particularly the women volunteers,” he said.
Belliappa acknowledged that all the participants spared some time for development work in their own villages, even though the work was fully voluntary in nature. He also praised the life cycle approach of the women volunteers to empower women in their villages which was certainly an effort that would sustain their empowerment.
K Muniyandi, a volunteer from Akkur, outlined his plans to start a women’s group in his village on similar lines as was outlined by the volunteers in their presentation.
The function came to close with the appreciation and felicitation of the unsung women volunteers working to bring about sustainable change among women living in their respective areas.
This International Women’s Day function was a fitting salutation to the entire unsung women world over who are silently but relentlessly working for women empowerment at the grassroots-level.
Syed Ali Mujtaba
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