"Affirmations-In Her Own Voice" a compilation of real-life stories of women who have battled poverty and other hurdles to come up in life brought out by CareIndia, a social organisation working for women in areas of health, education, livelihoods and disaster preparedness was released here recently by noted Kathak danseuse Sharmistha Mukherjee.
"Through this book we wanted to bring out the various struggles that women face in their everyday lives" says Muhammad Musa, CEO and Country Director of Care India.
The idea behind the book which narrates poignant tales of women from the stage of crisis, recovery to the final success stories was "to facilitate discourse and debate on womens' issues."
"In our country economic growth and development is rampant and still half the population of the country lives in poverty out of which 70 per cent are women," he said.
Photographer Andre Jeanpierre Fanthome, who has won the National Academy Award for Visual Arts has collaborated on this project photographing the women in their own settings.
"These women have incredible fighting spirit."
Fanthome says his favourite photograph is one of Shikha Mondal, a disabled woman who spreads awareness about polio in her village and urges parents to send their children to school.
"You cannot make out Shikha in the picture from amidst a group of sari clad women in the photograph. She wears a night dress because she cant wear a sari. She is unable to walk and crawls on the ground but still commands respect from the entire village. Just interacting with these women is incredible and the experience is wonderful," said Fanthome.
Bijoy Patro, a development journalist, who penned the tales of these resilient women says "These stories were just waiting to be told."
"There are three kinds of people who can't tell their stories - scientists, engineers and development workers. They are doing great work but they do not know how to communicate their stories. I wanted to capture the essence of work done by Care. Though they wanted a coffee table book I didn't want to miss out on great stories that came along with those smiling and inspiring pictures," he said.
Each of the twenty two stories carries along large photographs of the women with a short four hundred word description. MORE
