- Research & Conference Papers
Breaking New Ground
This research paper examines Azad Foundation’s decade-long journey since its establishment as a Trust in 2008, focusing on its mission to provide resource-poor women access to non-traditional livelihoods. It leverages an extensive database to quantitatively assess the impact and evolution of its initiatives.
Azad Foundation (Azad) was registered as a Trust in 2008 with the aim of giving resource-poor women access to non-traditional livelihoods. This involves breaking patriarchal norms regarding women and work and challenging the gender stereotyping of work as feminine and masculine, so as to create opportunities that will enable women to earn remunerative livelihoods with dignity. Azad started its core programme, Women on Wheels (WoW), for training and empowering resource poor women to become professional drivers. The programme also served the twin objective of providing safe transport solutions to women in cities. A decade of implementation has not only led to the achievement of these twin objectives but also established Azad internationally as an organization in the forefront of the campaign to eliminate discrimination against women in the work sphere. Azad has maintained a detailed record of its activities and resource use and has continually reviewed its performance to modify and improve it on the basis of the results. The present paper after providing an overview of the rationale and details of Azad’s work over the past decade, analyses this extensive database to quantitatively review this unique journey.
