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Literacy programme to uplift 2000 disadvantaged women

With no education opportunities are limited and women like Rawana are condemned to a life of misery, suffering and hopelessness.
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Women in rural areas continue to live in a harsh cycle of poverty. UNICEF reckons women make up two-thirds of the world’s illiterate population as the vast majority live in rural areas.

Now the Institute of Learning is planning to reverse this situation. It’s providing free SMME development training to about 2000 disadvantaged women.

A life of virtual servitude… Anything but idyllic but it’s a snapshot of women in rural areas.

It’s often a patriarchal climate with little room for independent thought or progress.

Take 87-year old Nomisile Rawana for example, a mother of six, she says her toughest battle was raising her children.

“It was hard raising my children, my husband was around but he didn’t help us with anything.”

With no education opportunities are limited and women like Rawana are condemned to a life of misery, suffering and hopelessness.

“I do not even have shoes, but I would spend my last money on my children.”

But there is a ray of hope… Vimala Ariyan, CEO of the South African Institute of Learning explains that they are offering free business development learning.

“What we have decided to do is develop a digital programme to train rural women on starting businesses which are sustainable over a long term.”

Ariyan calls for corporates to shift focus…

“Corporates have CSI initiatives, those should be focused on developing rural women. The support they need does not come from communities because communities are male dominated, and women are there to solve labour problems, work in the fields. They do informal production, agricultural production, and when it comes to sending them to school, it’s the boy child that goes to school.”

Although the programme will touch the lives of about two thousand women, the path to literacy remains winding and convoluted.

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