Three women leaders working for social causes awarded at CII Annual Business Summit

New Delhi [India], May 17 : The CII Foundation announced the winners of the Woman Exemplar Award 2024 at the CII Annual Business Summit 2024 held in New Delhi today. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman awarded three women leaders, who have risen above crippling socio-economic challenges to drive social change within their communities. These women leaders are working in the areas of health, education and micro-enterprise.

Ranjita Pawar from Osmanabad, Maharashtra, received the award in the Education category; Rumi Perween from Kishanganj, Bihar, in the Health category; and Saraswathi Malluvalasa from Vizianagaram, Andhra Pradesh, in the Micro-enterprise category. Each winner received a trophy, a certificate, and a cash prize of Rs 3 lakh.

For the 2024 edition of the Award, over 300 nominations were received from across India.

Pawar, born into the stigmatised Laman Banjara tribe, rose as a bold advocate from Osmanabad. To overcome the language barrier and the label of being a criminal tribe, she introduced foundational education in the local dialect, Gormati, empowering 27,000+ children, 1000 youth leaders and 20,000 adults from Nomadic Tribes and De-notified Tribes. This led to notable academic and psychological progress among Laman children.

Striving to improve the health indicators in rural Bihar, Rumi identified and tackled the prevalent issue of Tuberculosis and is advocating for increased awareness on menstrual and reproductive health through her NGO, impacting over 1,70,000 women and children through her work.

Saraswathi Malluvalasa drawing from her own experience with domestic violence and gender discrimination, recognized the correlation between food insecurity, economic dependence, and violence against women. In response, she established the "Millet Sisters," a network of small-scale women farmers working together to ensure food security through livelihood enhancement, improving the income of over 20,000 women. Her work exemplifies the "five E's" for women's empowerment: Education, Equality, Employment, Economic development, and Empowerment.

These exemplars are now part of a powerful national network of over 120-woman exemplars, each contributing to significant social change in their communities and positively impacting nearly 3 million lives annually. The CII foundation added in its release that it will continue to support the exemplars in through a range of initiatives to build their capacity for greater social impact.

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