Year Book 2021-22

It is always a matter of pride for Azad foundation, to see the trainees graduating with flying colors and start their careers in the domain of a nontraditional livelihood. Being a feminist organization, working with urban resource poor women, Azad believes that when women are socially and economically empowered, they become a catalyst of change; not just for their own life but also for their families and communities. By providing nontraditional livelihood options to women, Azad aims to challenge the stereotypical belief of the society that women cannot work in this sector and it’s a male dominant market. The objective of the organization is to establish a cadre of empowered professional women chauffeurs who can take charge of their own lives as well as create a safe transport solution for other women. Azad wants to see underprivileged women as empowered professionals who would earn “Livelihoods with Dignity” in the transport sector and at the same time Azad also wants to create a gender just ecosystem and gender sensitive markets which would ultimately help the women to negotiate and sustain their workforce participation. Since Azad’s focus is to create “livelihoods with Dignity” for women who have been living on the margins of society. This requires not only skills and knowhow but also the confidence to claim the public space, the ability to negotiate a masculine domain of work.

Women across class, caste and communities have to face tremendous reproductive responsibilities, violence, discrimination and harassment at home, on roads and at workplaces which limits their time and ability for paid work. A training program geared to create sustainable livelihoods in the non-traditional sector which is majorly dominated by men, will create capabilities of negotiation and bargaining power. With this thought and belief Azad’s training curriculum spans three kinds of modules: technical skill based module leading to acquisition of Permanent license and clearance of Sakha test after which trainee is declared employable, self-development module that aims at developing women’s identity as a confident professional and the empowerment module that aims at enabling the trainee to understand her social location and the structure of patriarchy leading to build courage and strategies to counter and resist multiple oppressions.

Yearbook 2021-22 is an endeavor by Azad foundation to present the record of all the trainees who underwent the journey of a rigorous training and have successfully acquired their permanent driving license across Delhi, Kolkata, Jaipur and Chennai during the period of April 2021-March 2022. Under the flagship program of Azad that is “women with wheels” ‘ in the year 2021-22, total 206 trainees got their permanent license made. Total 206 trainees successfully acquired their license, including 113 for 4 wheelers and 93 for 2 wheelers. Each trainee in the system comes in with her unique story, challenges, experience and struggle, and hence for Azad it is very important to celebrate the achievement of trainee, who put in a lot of effort to break the chains, each trainee is very precious and this year book is a tribute to the achievements of our trainees which offer glimpse of each of these women’s story of effort and change.

Read the Year Book for 2021-22