FINANCIAL EMPOWERMENT
Since the start of 2015, the Mumbai Sanctuary has seen explosive growth! More young women are working full time in the workshop than ever before. With courage and bravery, these young women are taking tremendous strides in their personal growth, especially their financial independence.
As anyone who has had the experience of their first "real" paycheck knows, it can take some time to learn how to manage your finances. It is no different with the participants in iSanctuary’s program. Each participant is paid per piece. The more jewelry they produce, the higher the paycheck. The learning curve is steep for these young women as they have rarely faced any sort of financial decisions before, nor do they come from families who modeled positive financial decision making. For many of them, this is the first time in their lives they have the liberty to make decisions with an income they have independently earned.
Through iSanctuary financial empowerment seminars, young women are able to learn the answers to many basic questions: What is savings? Why save? What are assets? Why build assets? What kind of challenges do we face when trying to save money? Each participant takes the time to develop short term and long term savings goals and a plan for reaching that goal. Not only are these young women learning to develop their own personal finance plans, but they are learning from a senior participant who models this skill. The course instructor joined iSanctuary seven years ago, and has demonstrated a natural teaching ability by instructing jewelry making classes and mentoring new participants in the aftercare homes. Through the focused development of one participant at a time, we were able to see exponential growth on the original investment seven years ago.
Exponential empowerment is taking place as one participant mentors and develops others! When one woman flourishes, others are empowered through her growth. The finance class is just one more example of iSanctuary’s holistic approach to aftercare.
