Women empowerment is one of the most important movements that is happening right now all over the world. Women are striving globally to fight oppression and gain rights and become a free person with her own identity. One of the most important aspects of that empowerment is financial independence. And this Chennai-based organization helps women with just that.
The Journey of Inner Goddess
Inner Goddess was co-founded by Anannya Parekh, a Mylapore girl from Chennai. She grew up in a joint family who encouraged her towards quality education and career. She had understood the gender inequality issues very early on in her life and realised that societal constructs and socio-economical structures are responsible for this.
Therefore, she dropped out of her university on second year, and started Inner Goddess in September of 2016. At present, she is not only a renowned speaker in Chennai but also has represented India at global summits.
How they’re making A Change
Inner Goddess educates women on the importance of financial literacy. They help women to cope with financial anxiety, personal investments, and mental health issues. They conduct workshops of 3 hours to do this following the teacher training model.
Their organization works towards helping women mainly aged between 16-25 years, who are poor, underprivileged and have no concept of financial independence. Till now they have helped about 10,000 women across big cities like Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai, and Bengaluru and have conducted more than 70 workshops.
Inner Goddess has also conducted these workshops in prestigious institutions and colleges and the charge for that was somewhere around Rs. 300 to Rs. 20,000. This way they collected 6 lakhs in 2018 and 3 lakh in 2019. Now the organization has become fully non-profit.
Future Plans
The team has observed that women face financial struggle because they have no concept of financial independence or money management knowledge. They often find themselves in a difficult position when their husbands pass away. Therefore, the team tries to educated young girls between ages of 16-25 on personal finance so that they can make better career choices and life choices. Parekh is currently planning to draft a petition to Human Resource Development Ministry to build a better curriculum on financial literacy and include it in formal education. Currently, she is working to institutionalize woman empowerment as a subject so underprivileged women can help themselves without depending