Diageo’s ‘plan W’ to empower 27,000 women in India

Diageo, the world's largest spirits maker, aims to empower two million women, including 27,000 in India, under a five-year socio-economic programme in Asia Pacific region.

"Plan W aims to reach women of all socio-economic profiles through training and skills development to empower two million women in 17 countries in Asia-Pacific over five years," the company announced in Singapore on Friday.

The plan has supported 15,000 women in Asia Pacific after it was launched last year.

Diageo announced two initiatives on Friday. One is the "Women in hospitality and tourism in Asia" conference, which aims to provide a platform for engagement and sharing of best practices for an audience committed to the cause of women's empowerment through learning. It would be held on 7 March 2014 in Singapore to celebrate International Women Day.

The second initiative would be the 'Women's empowerment (WE) journalism awards', which aim to recognise and honour outstanding achievements in the reporting on women's issues across the Asia Pacific, said Diageo, which has taken Hilton Hotel as a partner in the programmes.

"To date, we have launched 32 initiatives in 12 markets, working with 17 partners, and created a positive ripple effect that has reached 75,000 beneficiaries of these women," said Diageo's president for the Asia Pacific, Gilbert Ghostine.

In India, Diageo is working with the British Council Young Women Social Entrepreneurship Development Programme, which was launched in September this year.

The training programme aims to build skills and capacity of 20 master trainers to train others, starting from Delhi.

Diageo's second programme is Udygoni - a pilot project to build capacity NGOs to support women in developing micro-enterprises.

It aims to build capacity of 7 NGOs in Delhi, to help women develop micro-enterprises by sharing business skills and training on starting and growing micro-enterprises.

Diageo's third programme is Samarthanam Trust, which aims to up-scale an existing all-women call centre in Bangalore, to improve productivity and reach by training beneficiaries on technical skills and providing career counselling and placement support.

The first batch of 316 women has completed training. Most of these women are visually impaired or have physical disabilities. Enrolment for the second batch is in progress. The six month programme, which began in September, aims to train 1,050 women.

Diageo's partner in Udyogini and Samarthanam is Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) India.