Every year, International Women’s Day gives us a reason to stop and look around. Milestones matter, but so does the steady work that continues behind the scenes.
At S M Sehgal Foundation, we’ve learned something over many years of working across villages: real change doesn’t come from the outside. True change grows from within communities. And more often than not, women are the ones who are holding that growth together as farmers, mothers, frontline workers, mobilizers, and so much more.
From Rajasthan to Bihar, Haryana to Uttarakhand, these women aren’t waiting to be called leaders. They already are leaders.
This Women’s Day, we share a few of their stories, not as statistics, but as lived experiences from the field.
Women Lead in Water Management
In rural India, the work of fetching water has always landed on women and girls. Hours every day. Long distances. Heavy vessels. Not a metaphor, fetching water is a daily reality that shapes what else a woman can or can’t do with her time.
In Durga Nagar Township, Dewas district, Madhya Pradesh, a 25,000-liter community water tank was built as part of an Integrated Village Development Project. Our Water Management Program team worked with the community to provide households with round-the-clock access to stored water.
For Anita and others like her in the settlement, this access also means something as simple as time—for family, for rest, and for themselves. The tank infrastructure, now looked after by a community committee is also a model of shared ownership.
Women aren’t only the beneficiaries—they are often the ones driving the community conversations.
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Kunti Gupta, project coordinator, S M Sehgal Foundation
Kunti Gupta, a project coordinator with S M Sehgal Foundation, was recognized as a Women Water Champion by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for her work in water conservation, quality, and wastewater management across Haryana and Bihar. She started as a community mobilizer. Over years of working directly with villages dealing with scarcity, salinity, and fluoride contamination, she became someone people naturally turn to for help. Her work in community sessions, awareness drives, and slow, patient capacity building is not glamorous. But the impact is real.
When women are part of water governance, the solutions tend to last.
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Women in Agriculture: Doing the Work and Finally Getting the Recognition
While women have long contributed to farming in India, their access to resources, markets, and formal recognition has often remained limited. In Champawat district, Uttarakhand, the Champawat Monal Farmer Producer Company, formed under our Agriculture Development program, is working to change that by supporting small and marginal farmers with high-yielding seeds, skill training, and connections to markets.
Today, the company has 1,124 shareholders, including 1,119 women and 5 men. In the past year alone, 450 new women shareholders have joined. Women are also part of the leadership, with five women serving on the Board of Directors and five women as promoters.
Godavari Kaloni used to describe herself mainly as a homemaker. Now she travels to neighboring villages, guiding other farmers through crop planning, pest management, and fertilizer use. That’s a real shift in role, in confidence, in how she sees herself.
Geeta Devi says she used to be afraid to speak in public. But not anymore! Farmer Interest Group meetings gave her a space to talk, ask questions, and push back when something didn’t seem right.
Pushpa Chaubey has taken on something even harder by going village to village, encouraging women farmers to step forward and speak in the first place. That kind of mobilization is slow, unglamorous work. But it’s also the work that makes everything else possible.
The fields of Champawat are changing the crops they grow, the methods they use, and the people who have a say in how agriculture is handled and how decisions are made.
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Education Takes a Whole Community
In Alwar, Rajasthan, eighteen-year-old Afseena was studying from a single worn-out textbook. That was before Project Umeed brought a solar-powered digital library to her school with computers, a smart board, and access to resources she hadn’t had before.
Afseena is one of nearly 4,000 children across multiple states who now have that access—but the technology is only part of the change.
School Management Committees that include mothers and community members are taking on the responsibility for these spaces—showing up to monitor what’s working and pushing for better attendance. When mothers become genuinely invested in schools, schools become better institutions. That’s not mere theory, we’ve seen it happen in real time.
Afseena’s story, more than about digital literacy, demonstrates what happens when a community decides that their children deserve more.
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Community Is Where Leadership Actually Starts
In Kultajpur, Haryana, Pinki Devi signed up for Pashu Sakhi training under an agriculture initiative. Some villagers were initially hesitant to accept livestock health advice from a woman. Time was needed for trust to build through consistent effort, practical demonstrations, and results that spoke for themselves.
Within a year, she had treated and dewormed more than a hundred animals. As a result, goat prices in the village went up because the animals were healthier. She now earns an independent income. People call on her because she knows what she’s talking about.
In Bihar’s East Champaran district, a different kind of work is happening. Nutrition workshops for frontline workers, including anganwadi workers, auxiliary nurse midwives, and community health staff, are building awareness around maternal and child nutrition. These aren’t headline-making interventions, but they shift how communities think about food, health, and preventive care–which matters.
Taken together, these aren’t isolated stories. They’re part of a pattern: when women are given knowledge and a real place in decision-making, entire communities grow stronger.
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To the Women of S M Sehgal Foundation
None of this happens without the people doing the day-to-day work.
Women field coordinators travel village to village. Program leads figure out what actually works. Researchers ask the harder questions. Community mobilizers hold meetings under trees or in panchayat halls. Their work doesn’t always make end up in reports. But their work is what holds everything together across more than 1,000 villages in multiple states.
We see it. We’re grateful for it.
Meet Our Team
Her Story Is Our Story
The stories described here are just a small slice of what’s happening across rural India.
In water committees, farmer cooperatives, classrooms, livestock groups, and health workshops, women are shaping their communities in ways both visible and quiet. Their strength may not be loud or dramatic. But their influence is practical, persistent, and consistent.
Something real continues to build by the day.
If these stories stayed with you, many more are waiting in the Stories section of S M Sehgal Foundation’ Read More
Happy Women’s Day
To every woman who keeps showing up for her village, her family, her community—we see you. We celebrate you. And we’re with you.
About the Authors
Priya Chaudhary
Social Impact, CSR, and Gender & Development
Priya Chaudhary is an expert in Social Impact, CSR, and Gender & Development with a focus on gender equity, social inclusion, and evidence-based change. With extensive experience in project management, storytelling, and qualitative research, she has worked on various NGO marketing and development projects.
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