A month full of activities for women concludes

Throughout the month of October, which has just come to close, we at Mumbai Smiles carried out a wide range of activities to promote women’s rights.

As we mentioned a few days ago, we began by observing the International Day of the Girl Child on October 11th. We dedicated that day to the role of girls and the importance of their education. We also drew attention to gender-based violence—specifically child marriage—issues that are central to all our projects and which we highlighted on this day together with many mothers and young women from the Bhandup community.

Jaume Sanllorente, founder and Director General of Sonrisas de Bombay, took part in these entrepreneurship training sessions for women.

Entrepreneurship training for women

Following that event, we organized an entrepreneurship training program for women participating in the “Access to School” “Smiling Bus” and “Library on Wheels” projects. The training was conducted over three sessions, covering a comprehensive yet foundational curriculum designed to help participants launch a business idea. Topics included finance, marketing, business plan development, supplier relations, identifying business opportunities, the essential qualities of an entrepreneur, and how to leverage one’s own experience and skills to guide entrepreneurial endeavors.

Women’s entrepreneurship is key to fostering financial independence and strengthening their role in society. It also serves to generate sustainable business activity and contributes to improving household and family economies. In the Bhandup neighborhood, where employment opportunities for women are highly limited, learning how to start a business opens new paths for personal and community development. The high level of participation in these sessions highlighted both the beneficiaries’ need for this type of knowledge and their strong desire to launch small businesses. The NGO Creative Handicrafts collaborated on this training program.

On the “tree of equality,” couples worked as a team to fill the ideal of home life with values.

Workshop on family coexistence

Another of the activities that we carried out around women in the last month was a workshop for the Prevention of Gender Violence by improving the family climate. Improving the relationship between fathers and mothers is essential to avoid cases of sexist violence. Furthermore, an adequate family climate is essential for the development of girls and boys. So this workshop brought together two important objectives in our approach to community and family work.

The session was aimed precisely at improving this coexistence between fathers and mothers through dynamics and activities to generate greater empathy between them, resolve conflicts in a friendly manner, equitably distribute tasks, or gain equality and balance. All aspects that were constructively welcomed by the 20 couples who attended this workshop.