The Skoll Foundation is an organization that holds summits and forums about the world’s most persistent issues and epidemics – ones so big not a lot of us tend to think about them on a daily basis. One champion at the Skoll Forum this year was a name everyone in the US should recognize – Stacey Abrams. She’s been honored for her diligent work on the unbelievable numbers of African-Americans in the US South she’s registered to vote over the years. She has single-handedly had an impact on America’s voting demographic. Each year, the Skoll Foundation presents awards in the form of funding to NGO’s who work on issues like these: inequality, poverty, pandemic, education and more. This past cohort of winners from the spring of 2020 included an NGO from India – ARMANN.
$1.5 Million to Support ARMANN’s Efforts to Educate Women on Healthcare
ARMANN’s focus is educating India’s women who live in poverty on female healthcare, especially regarding pregnancy and reproductive education. Their programs are estimated to reach about 18 million Indian women on a weekly basis. They’ve done amazing things for these women and children who would otherwise have no access to information of this kind. But where ARMANN really shone in 2020 was with their efforts to educate the poverty-level masses of India on COVID: its nature, how it spreads and how to prevent its spread, among other things. Right now, ARMANN is present in 16 of India’s 28 states, with over 160,000 mobile health centers. With the funding they need, they want to be present in an additional 5 states within the next two years. Organizations like the Skoll Foundation step in where governments can’t or don’t, allowing these private organizations to help the lower classes of their country to live better by having access to resources the rest of us take for granted.
