Women's Livelihood is where education becomes income. Sneha Karma Foundation's third focus area takes the girls we have educated and the women of their communities and turns learning into earning through three linked programmes: Skills Development, which gives young women marketable, employable skills; Support-A-Artisan, which provides small loans that let artisans buy materials and grow a business; and Artisans Direct, which builds fair marketplaces where the things women make can be sold with dignity. Together they complete the journey that begins with a changed belief and a classroom, and ends with a woman holding an income of her own.
Sneha Karma Foundation is a 501(c)(3) public charity (EIN 47-3774368; California entity no. C3783680), founded in 2016 to empower underprivileged girls and women in India. To date we have trained more than 80 women and supported more than 75 women artisans, alongside more than 600 girls supported through our education programmes.
Education without economic opportunity leaves a woman dependent, and dependency is what our whole approach exists to end. In the communities we serve, young women leave school or training with no local labour market to absorb them and no capital to start for themselves. Artisans — weavers, tailors, craft-makers — produce beautiful work but sell into markets that set the price against them: buyers with no alternative source of credit dictate terms, middlemen capture the margin, and a woman who has made something of value cannot earn what it is worth. The consequence is familiar: talented women abandon their craft because it does not pay, and households remain one bad season away from pulling a daughter out of school.
Two problems therefore need solving together. The first is capability — many women lack the specific, current skills that employers and markets actually pay for. The second is capital and market access — even capable artisans cannot scale without working capital or a fair route to the buyer. Addressing only one of these leaves the other to undo the gain.
To enable underprivileged and educated women to earn a stable, dignified income of their own, converting education into livelihood and livelihood into lasting household security.
1. Deliver market-aligned skills training that leads to demonstrable employability or self-employment. 2. Provide small, repayable or revolving loans so artisans can buy materials and grow production. 3. Build fair market access for women's products, so producers capture a fair share of the final price. 4. Support the transition from training to income — job placement, first customers, mentoring. 5. Track income earned, businesses sustained, and loans recycled so that impact is evidenced.
Young women and women artisans in the rural and forest-edge communities of eastern India, including the villages around the Garbhanga Reserve Forest, prioritising graduates of our education programmes, first-time earners, and women artisans producing crafts, textiles and food products.
Skills Development delivers practical, in-demand training — tailoring, crafts, food processing, digital and small-business skills — designed with an eye to what buyers in the region actually pay for, followed by placement support or a supported start at self-employment. Support-A-Artisan provides small working-capital loans, sized to a real need (materials, a machine, stock) and structured to be repaid from earnings, so the fund recycles to the next woman. Artisans Direct is the market side: it aggregates what the women make, presents it fairly, and sells it through channels that return a fair price to the maker, with the goal that her work earns what it is worth. Throughout, women are mentored through the fragile early months when most new livelihoods fail.
We expect participant women to earn a measurable income within a defined period, to sustain that income beyond the first year, to repay and recycle loans, and to increase their households' resilience — the buffer that keeps a daughter in school when a season goes badly. The compounding effect is the point: a woman who earns has daughters who stay educated, and she becomes proof in her community that a girl's education pays.
Each participant is tracked by name through training, income earned, business status and loan repayment. We measure movement from no income to first income, and from first income to sustained income, and we review why some livelihoods stall so training and loan design can improve. Artisans Direct sales are tracked by maker, so the return to the producer is visible.
Support-A-Artisan is designed as a revolving fund: loans repaid become loans for the next woman. Artisans Direct aims to become a self-sustaining route to market rather than a subsidy. Skills Development is cost-efficient per participant and replicable across villages, and each skilled, earning woman becomes a trainer and an example for the women around her.
Budget available on request. Indicative allocation: roughly 45% skills training and mentoring, 30% artisan loan fund, 15% market development, and 10% monitoring, evaluation and administration.
Women's Livelihood closes the circle. It is the programme that converts the belief changed by Nayi Soch and the education delivered by Support-A-Girl into incomes, independence and resilience — and into the household stability that keeps the next generation of girls in school.
The central risk in livelihood work is that a woman completes training but cannot convert it into income — the point at which most programmes quietly fail. We reduce that risk deliberately. Loans are sized to a real, identified need rather than a fixed figure, so capital matches the business rather than the other way round. Mentorship continues through the first difficult months, when new livelihoods are most fragile and most likely to be abandoned. And Artisans Direct supplies a demand route, so that production has a buyer and a woman is not left making things no one will purchase. Where a livelihood still stalls, we record why and adjust — more training, a smaller or larger loan, a different product — before the capital is exhausted. A related risk is over-dependence on our market channel; our aim is that Artisans Direct opens doors that outlast our involvement, so that a producer can eventually sell on her own terms.