PHD Chamber of Commerce International Women’s Day Celebrations Sangam University Knowledge Partner

Educating girls is the best way to bring progress for women as Female literacy has considerable multiplier effects in all areas of women empowerment and educational empowerment alone can transform women into powerful agents of social change.

Bhilwara (I-Newswire) March 8, 2013 - PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry organized an International Conference on “Women Empowerment through Literacy” and Job Fest for Women of Rajasthan at Town Hall Bhilwara on the occasion of International Women’s Day 8 March 2013. Bhilwara 2020 and Mewar Chamber of Commerce and Industry – MCCI were the co-partners for the same. Ms Sushmita Shekhar Secretary General PHD Chamber gave the welcome address highlighting the significance of the day.

Mr Jean Marc Castejon Senior Specialist European Union and Ms Kate Martin India –EU Skill Project European Union addressed the gathering emphasizing on the importance of Women for economic development of nation and world at large as well as the avenues available in this context through European Union.

Speaking on the occasion, Ms Antima Soni Board Member Sangam University enlightened the audience covering various issues in this context which included Empowerment – Education Correlation, likely outcomes of empowerment, and reasons for low women enrollment in education. She also highlighted the stellar role played by Akhil Bhartiya Maheshwari Samaj as well as Badri Lal Soni Charitable Trust for the cause of women education by establishing at Bhilwara an International School – Sangam School of Excellence, ITM College and Sangam University.

Her revealing statistics on the Girl’s Enrollment of steady 30% for the past 10 years at ITM was an eye opener to all present as this is to be viewed against the fact that the Engineering Workforce Commission in USA had found that in 2002 only 18.5 percent of all undergraduates at more than 500 different institutions were women. She also shared details pertaining to parental attitudes for girl child education based on a recent research survey conducted by Sangam University.

Prof KC Singhal from NIMS University Jaipur and Prof Bhawani Shankar Sharma Chairperson Lalit Kala Akademi Jaipur also addressed the gathering in this context. Giving the keynote address, Mr Ajay Singh Chittora Director ICDS, Department of Women and Child Development, Government of Rajasthan gave salient features of the schemes envisaged and implemented for the cause of women empowerment in the state and inaugurated the Job Fest.

Prof BR Natarajan President – Vice Chancellor Sangam University addressing the gathering lamented that it was an irony in the country with worshipping of Goddess Durga for power and Goddess Saraswati for knowledge, the nation at large was discussing about empowering women with education in conferences, seminars and symposiums. Pointing out that while top ranking institutions in India today including the IITs were analyzing reasons for low enrollment of girls over the years, ITM Bhilwara which laid the foundations for the evolution of Sangam University was analyzing reasons for unusually high girl’s enrollment of the order of 30% steadily for the past 10 years.

The audience responded with a loud applause when it was pointed out that the recent Business Insider listing of top 25 Powerful Women engineers across the world included Indians Meenakshi Chatterjee of Twitter who had graduated from BITS Pilani and Padmasree Warrior of CISCO who had graduated from IIT Delhi. On this occasion, a souvenir "Roadmap to Empowering Women of Rajasthan: Creating Livelihood Linkages" was released. Mr Jatinder Singh Secretary PHD Chamber anchored the proceedings while Dr PM Beswal from MCCI proposed the vote of thanks.

The colourful audience who were present at the Town Hall included "Who is Who" of Bhilwara elite, students from several colleges and women from the suburbs.