Empowerment
Empowering women, helping them become independent and improving their lives in certain parts of the world can be an extremely difficult task. This is one of the missions that IKEA wishes to carry out with its Social Entrepreneurs programme and its Foundation.
Empowering women in India as well: “There are projects that change lives”
To ensure better quality of life for women and their communities they must be given tools to increase self-confidence, pride, financial empowerment, optimism and the strength to change.
These are strong and hard-working women who create unique and original products. Many of them, like Saroj, have left a harsh past behind them, which they have managed to overcome thanks to IKEA and their amazing perseverance.
“I was married at 15. I never had the chance of becoming who I wanted to be”.
Saroj, who is now 31, was raised in a poor Indian village in Uttar Pradesh. She has another 5 siblings whose father, a farmer, could not afford to keep in school beyond year eight. “When I was a little girl I went to school and was very happy. I had a lot of friends", she recalls.
“Now all those memories have been almost completely erased from my mind. When I arrived at my husband’s house, I forgot everything".
Saroj has 4 children and, until recently, had no money or skills. She also lacked her husband’s permission to earn a living for herself. “My husband had very little work. He only worked occasionally”, she explains. "I knew that if I got a job, we would have less hardship".
Today Saroj is an empowered and independent woman
Saroj’s outlook for the future changed when the representatives of a programme to empower women of the IKEA Foundation arrived in her village.
“They assembled a group of 12 women and told us we could learn to embroider and to sew”, Saroj tells us.
But her husband and other family members did not allow her to leave the house. “They told me that these were just lies. But I insisted and told them: I’ve been offered this chance and I’m going to take it, whether true or false. They were all upset with me… but I went ahead with my decision."
And her perseverance bore its fruit: Saroj now works as an artisan creating limited edition collections of household accessories that are sold in IKEA stores all over the world.
"My dream is to carry on working in this", she says. The most important thing for her is that the money she earns is allowing her to fulfil a dream she has had for her children since she was little: “All my children go to school. I want them to get far in life, to study, to progress and become whatever they want”.
We continue to fight for the equality and independence of all women in the world
At IKEA we wish to continue helping women like Saroj to become financially self-sufficient so that they and future generations have better chances in life, given that this is perfectly possible. When we empower women, we also improve the health, the education and the future of their children, as Saroj says: "A mother only wants her children to be happy and lead a good life".