Our Program
The WEP Center
The WEP Center is a lively, safe place within the NGO partner. After the college day, young women, who all receive scholarships to area colleges, come to the Center to meet friends, study and participate in the I Am a Leader Academy activities, a rigorous curriculum of career guidance, exploration and readiness. At these Centers, young women find their voice, discover career ambitions, expand their understandings and ignite their inner spark. Students attend a WEP Center throughout their college years – typically spending three years.
I Am a Leader Academy: A student-directed certificate program to discover the leader within, awareness of career interest and its required skills.
Scholarships: WEP provides scholarships to area colleges and other institutions.
Community: A place to enjoy time with friends and study in a supportive, safe environment.
Classes, Tutoring, Library and Computer Labs, Study Space: To help students excel in the college classroom, receive an I am a Leader certificate and learn among their peers.
Nutrition and Fitness and other activities: Center Directors arrange karate, book club, current event discussions and debates based on student interest.
Home Visits / Family Guidance: Center leaders visit homes to ensure students participation and parental support.
Alumnae Association: Graduates keep in touch, stay involved, and support current students.
WEP Center Activities
Home visit
English class
Study time
I Am a Leader Academy
Village research
Visit to Gandi Museum
Meeting bees at an apiary
I Am a Leader Academy
A vision-expanding curriculum exploring life’s opportunities and ideas. Weekends and holidays, WEP scholars direct this certificate curriculum of speakers, workshops, field trips, internships, training programs, courses and activities expanding awareness of: leadership, health, nutrition, personal finance, civics, communication, entrepreneurialism, technology, and the environment.
Certificates:
- Leadership: a series of workshops to discover their inner leader and voice
- Career Exploration: seven adventures to meet women and learn about their careers at banks, organic farms, apiaries, hospitals, factories and others workplaces
- Career Skills: to prepare for a career by taking online and classroom courses (financial literacy, language, Microsoft suite, coding)
- Take Action For Good: to develop a new habit for 30 days
- Entrepreneurship: to design a product and learn how to take it to market
- Capstone Project: to complete a creative career-focused project
- Career Choice: to meet a mentor with resume and career plan in hand.
“My favorite part of I am a leader is the life skills workshops to help our students make informed decisions, communicate effectively and [become self-reliant]. Students have a huge potential. I Am a Leader also imparts soft skills relating to emotional and social intelligence to cope in a competitive world.”
“I Am A Leader journals teach life skills, taught neither at college nor home. These journals fill the important gaps in their understanding of the world around them. The self confidence, skills, and self-worth they develop at WEP – one cannot put a price tag on it.”
“In our first year in Madurai, we noticed girls crying to friends about their mother’s illness, a loan shark’s visit, or their own marriage pressure. We began I Am a Leader for young women to understand and gain their voice by visiting their community, meeting women leaders, volunteering and discovering career options.”
Through I Am a Leader, WEP students become confident, informed leaders in their homes, communities, and, most importantly, of their own lives. They are positioned to enter fulfilling careers of their own interest and to play their part in an increasingly global world.
Our Students & Alumnae
WEP students are young women, high school graduates, in critical need of financial, academic and social support. Due to poverty’s overwhelming pressures, they lack confidence, study skills, and the ability to express themselves. They are unaware of their potential – and their opportunities. In spite of these deficits, they have the ambition and grit to graduate from college and enter a career.
WEP students are:
- ages 17-28
- living under the poverty line
- from semi-urban and urban communities
- 10th grade graduates
- whose parents are mostly illiterate or semi-literate, daily-wage workers
Our Students
Esther Subhashini, the Director of the Ushassu WEP Center Ushassu, wrote:” This girl is the spirit of Ushassu.”
I am close with my family. My mother works as a helper and my father is a security guard at a hospital. I know that women’s education is vital to get a good position in society.
Our Alumnae
Alumnae Association
WEP Alumnae visit the Madurai Center
Like all poor women in South Asia living on less than $1.90 a day, the background and life of a WEP student is hard. And the reality is that, even after moving up and obtaining relatively well-paid employment, her hold on happiness and security may, for a variety of reasons – frequently domestic – be precarious.
At the same time, WEP alumnae are deeply inspiring and a rich source of knowledge and advice. Their return visits to the WEP Centers are, for both students and staff, informative and highly motivating.
For these reasons, the doors to Alumnae are always open. A student’s association with WEP is life-long as well as life-changing.
In addition to the Alumnae newsletter, alumnae receive:
- Scholarships to internships, training programs and online courses
- Referrals to employment and career counseling
- An alumnae communication platform
- An invitation to be an I Am a Leader trainer
- Ongoing support, as needed
Consortium & Our Partners
The WEP model – partnering with established and well-run NGO’s, rather than creating new agencies from scratch, and providing a curriculum easily adapted to local circumstance and thus transferable to other countries and cultures, ensures that WEP’s mission, is accomplished cost-effectively while meeting the needs of diverse partners and the girls and women served.
These partnerships, now formalized in a WEP-led Consortium, have placed more than 800 women (of 1200 alumnae) in their first jobs as pharmacists, lab technicians, therapists, teachers, computer operators, corporate and legal assistants, and entrepreneurs.
In October 2017, WEP held a highly successful forum attended by 28 women and girl-focused NGOs working in South Asia to discuss sharing strategies, programs and resources. Following this forum, WEP developed a five-year plan (2018-2022) to expand its Consortium to fifteen NGOs throughout South Asia, each hosting a WEP Center and using the WEP platform to share ideas, information, action plans, successes, challenges, and resources.
The Consortium will magnify greatly the reach and impact of WEP’s program while enriching each of the partner’s operations and efficiencies.
- The WEP NGO PARTNERS. Grassroots NGOs that receive WEP program share strategies and programs with other NGO partners. They invite:
- LOCAL PARTNERS. Mentors, local businesses, schools, and organizations provide students advice, field trip destinations, internships, training and possible employment.
- STRATEGIC PARTNERS. National or international businesses, organizations and foundations, provide funding and resources to the Consortium as a whole.
WEP’s Consortium is based on five principles:
- Educated and trained women can achieve parity in the globalized workforce.
- Small, competently managed, grassroots NGOs most effectively meet the needs of poor girls, many wishing to enter college and career.
- WEP’s Center model and I Am a Leader curriculum adapts easily to girl-focused NGO’s seeking a higher education and career guidance program.
- Businesses, private, public and nonprofit, benefit from highly motivated, educated women employees.
- A WEP led Consortium sharing member strategies, programs and resources leverages their impact.
WEP Center Directors at the 2018 Consortium meeting
If you are interested in joining our Consortium of NGOs and Local and Strategic Partners, please contact us.
Current Consortium Partners
“Light” in Tamil
Madurai, Tamil Nadu, South India
Founded in 2002
“Morning Light” in Telugu
A partnership with Cerena Foundation, in Hyderabad, Telangana
Began in 2007
A home for girls
Kadapa, Andhra Prades
Began in 2012