India can still be a hard place to be a woman. Despite significant progress over the last decades, the proportion of women who can read and write is still lower than for men and less than a quarter participate in paid work outside the home according to the World Bank. Inside the home though many women say they can now participate in decisions with their husbands, one-third also report having experienced spousal violence. Dowries were made illegal in India in 1961 but failure by the bride’s family to pay what is considered a “decent dowry” can still result in injury and even death of the woman. Discrimination and lack of opportunity can be even more pronounced for women of certain caste and religious backgrounds.

Into this setting, the Sambhali Trust was established in 2007 to promote the empowerment of women and girls in Rajasthan, Northern India, and now runs numerous educational and employment related activities including women’s empowerment centres in Jodphur, Setrawa (the desert hometown of Sambhali founder Govind Rathore) and Jaisalmer.

Like many other female focused organizations, Sambhali knows that education and employment hold the key to women’s independence, dignity and flourishing. Unique and certainly integral to the Sambhali approach is to work through, not against, culture in supporting the women and girls they work with. In Rajasthan, this has helped create a space where women can co-liberate and create continuous change within their households and communities, by serving as role models for each other and the next generation.

One of the empowerment centres in Jodphur is the Laadli Centre, housed in a small, white building on a semi-quiet street near the rail tracks. It consists of an open area and two small rooms to the side, filled to the roof with papers, books and sewing equipment, and walls covered with inspirational student-made posters (e.g., one on bright pink paper is a drawing of a dumbbell with the inscription “girl power”).  The centre is run briskly and warmly by two women - Anju and Alia.

Anju is Jodphur native, married with two college age sons and living with her husband's family near the Sambhali Trust office on the other side of Jodphur to the Laadli centre. As a girl she was able to complete secondary school but after marriage was expected to stay at home and not work outside. However, seven years ago, after her children were old enough and a Sambhali centre had opened nearby, her mother-in-law told her and her sister-in-law to go and learn sewing there.