Desai Foundation
Organization background

Desai Foundation (DF) is a US-based charity that focuses on empowering women & children in 568 villages across Gujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan through a number of community initiatives such as health & hygiene camps; menstrual health; vocational training; science and entrepreneurship programs.

Their livelihood projects include sewing and design, beautician course, candle making, jewellery making, and bangle making courses. They also run a Asani Sanitary Napkin program where they train women to produce retail-quality, low-cost sanitary pads, using a machine designed for the purpose. They also have an entrepreneurship course in our livelihood projects that focuses on finance, management, sales and marketing.

Project background

The pandemic has resulted in many companies shutting down operations thus making it difficult for people to earn a livelihood. The most affected population belongs to the informal sector - more specifically, women. As a result, DF decided to implement a novel program to address the need for face masks in underserved communities.

120 women have been trained to produce handsewn face masks that will be distributed to villages for free, addressing a critical need, while creating a source of income for women in rural India. To date, they have distributed 100,000+ free face masks and their goal is to produce 100,000 face masks every month for villages across Gujarat.

GKF contributions to DF