The Aditya Birla Group is at the forefront of the education of the girl child. Under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan's Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas (KGBV), the Group was able to enlist thousands of rural school girl dropouts in collaboration with the district rural teams. Motivating girls and intensive parent counselling on how education can be a leveler and give their children a future so different from their own has indeed worked wonders.
Importantly, at the KGBVs, the Group conducts awareness sessions on health and hygiene with NGOs and hospital staff, provides merit scholarships and helps out with additional uniforms, library books and water purifiers.
The Group launched a unique social project with a business component in the interiors of Karnataka a couple of years ago. For their marquee-branded apparel manufacturing company Madura Fashion & Lifestyle, several teams went into the interiors of the villages and enthused the totally unlettered underprivileged women to master tailoring and work in the Company. Investing in their training was a challenge they took on. Today, over 7,000 women work at Madura Fashion & Lifestyle in Karnataka. Of these 90 per cent are from the villages.
They have also inked collaborative projects with Jan Shiksha Samsthan and the National Jute Board for training hundred rural women at Patalganga in Maharashtra and Rishra in Kolkata in jute craft-cum-fabric.