Areas of Interest:
Activist and Advocacy, Campaigning and Networking in the area of Gender Issues
Background: In 1982, Jecintha Kumaraswamy, an idealistic 25-year old economics graduate, founded Sakti, a non-profit organization geared towards helping make the poorest of the poor financially independent and able to take charge of their lives. Her decision to work primarily with women came with the realization that they occupied the bottom of the development ladder. Discriminative hiring and lower wages for women, especially in the villages, translated into lower expenditure levels on female education. The vicious cycle was further compounded by cultural factors of a relentlessly patriarchal society and practices like the Devadasi cult, dowry killings, female infanticide, early marriages and the impossibly unfair division of labor at home. Sakti was to combat this with heart and integrity.
