A smart way to women empowerment

The US Consulate General, Hyderabad along with Nishumbita Ballet and Theatre Group recently launched an initiative ‘Inspiring Tales of Women and their Entrepreneurial Spirit’, with an objective to create awareness in rural women about entrepreneurship, gender based violence, human trafficking and social menaces, at American Corner, Begumpet.

As a part of this initiative, the theatre group will use traditional art of storytelling and street theatre to spread the message of empowering rural women through entrepreneurship in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana states. The official program will start from the second week of December in Medak.

For this programme Nishumbita theatre group created a 45-minute play ‘Mundhadugu’, which has some inspiring stories of women from the past.

The play explains about the stories of women, who achieved money, prestige and provided employment for others.

It starts by explaining how a Gujarati woman, Lijjat achieved Rs 6.5 Billion turnover for a year by making papads. She started making Lijjat Papads along with her village women in 1959 by borrowing a sum of Rs 80 from Gram Panchayat.

The second part of the play showcases the Devadasi culture in India. It is a culture where a girl is dedicated to worship and service of a deity or a temple for the rest of her life.

The play showcases the problems of Devadasi system in India. It explains the story of a Devadasi girl, Mahanandha from Karnataka and how she overcome the problem successfully.

The final part of the play explains the story of Veera Shantamma and how she breaks boundaries for love. The play ends with stressing on importance of women.

Gabriel, Public Affairs Officer, US Consulate General Hyderabad, says “We started this initiative to encourage women in rural areas. Women can do business better than men.

One woman can educate the entire family. Our main aim is to remove domestic violence and trafficking against women.

We want to provide them a better way to do business. We will propagate this initiative by using social media as well.”

“Theatre is a medium of propagation. It will reach everywhere in the country. Even cinema and television has certain limits but street plays have no limits.

It will reach even remote areas and makes people think. Through this program we want to explain the contemporary things in an innovative way,” he adds.