Stitching Lingerie Improves Women's Lives in South India S. Subhashini's name means "she who speaks well." However, the 25-year-old woman, who is from the Tiruvannamalai district of Tamil Nadu, has not been able to hear or speak from birth. She overcame her disabilities to get a bachelor's degree in commerce from St. Louis College for the Deaf in Chennai, a school for the speech and hearing impaired, but she could not find a job after graduating in 2007. Then in 2009 a recruiting team from Intimate Fashions, a Tamil Nadu manufacturer that makes bras for the American lingerie retailer Victoria's Secret, came to her hometown. The Intimate Fashions team hired hundreds of young women from Tiruvannamalai, including Ms. Subhashini, to work in their factory as part of a project sponsored by the state government and the World Bank to empower women. Now a confident young woman, Ms. Subhashini says through an interpreter, "I'm very happy to have found a job and a purpose in life." Four years ago, as part of its corporate social responsibility initiatives, Intimate Fashions decided to join the state government's Tamil Nadu Empowerment and Poverty Reduction Project, which was 75 percent financed by the World Bank with $274 million. The project, called Pudhu Vaazhvu ("new life"), sent 1,800 women who had only a primary school education to work at Intimate Fashions. All of them were from 26 districts that were identified by the state government as economically disadvantaged. Guduvanchery, 20 kilometers, or 12.4 miles, south of Chennai, is home to the Intimate Fashions factory that makes brassieres under the Victoria's Secret brand. Intimate Fashions manufactures seven million bras a year, or one-tenth of all products sourced by Victoria's Secret, generating $40 million in revenue. Inside the large manufacturing unit in Guduvanchery, peppy Tamil film music plays on the speakers as women work amid mountains of brightly colored bras. The factory now employs 2,500 women over 18, and 92 percent of them are from families that are below the poverty line from the districts covered under the program. In a region where several foreign companies like Ford and Nokia are competing for workers, Intimate Fashions found that employees were quick to learn and willing to stay on for at least a few years. "It has been a great partnership," says Prasad Rege, general manager for operations at Intimate Fashions. But for the support of the Pudhu Vaazhvu project, there would have been a question mark on our future. And for these women, Intimate Fashions has been like a second home. All workers are paid the minimum monthly wage of 3,500 rupees ($65), and after the training is completed, which usually exceeds four weeks, there is an added incentive of up to 200 rupees per day. In the morning, they get a nutritional hot beverage instead of coffee, since many of them are anemic, and they have access to free spoken English and personal grooming classes. This is only one instance where the Pudhu Vaazhvu project has been able to provide a livelihood to their target group of needy women, deserving youth and the disabled. Under the Village Poverty Reduction Committee (VPRC) program, 64,000 self-help groups have been formed in the selected districts, enabling women to take control of their lives and finances. These poverty reduction committees are managed and monitored by the community, thus doing away with middlemen as well as nongovernmental organizations. The beneficiaries, once identified and approved by the community, are trained in the skills needed for the livelihood that they choose, with dairy, weaving, goat rearing and pottery being the most popular. Livelihood specialists and mediators come in only when required, for example, to connect trained youth with the Human Resources department in different companies or to find markets for the products made by the self-help groups. Most of the work is otherwise managed by the women themselves, women who, by their own admission, had never stepped out of their homes on their own prior to the project. "Now I even go to the bank and do all the work for my VPRC by myself," says G. Mala, secretary of the Village Poverty Reduction Committee in Mamandur town. I could not have even dreamed of this five years ago. Pudhu Vaazhvu has been so successful that in 2010 the World Bank called it one of the best global projects they have financed. What is particularly notable about the project is that it has a clear exit strategy once the current term of operations ends in 2014. "We have been training the women to get ready for the time when they have to completely take over and keep the show running," says P. Amudha, the project director. So far, it looks like they will succeed. For the participants, the most significant benefit of these projects is the self-esteem that comes from earning a decent income and being independent. P. Jaya, 25, comes from a poor family in Nagapattinam, where her father is an agricultural laborer. "I am now able to save more than 50,000 rupees ($920) per year," she said during a recent interview. I cannot still believe that my parents are able to buy jewelry for my marriage with the money I send. More important to her, her town's residents show her a deference that an unmarried woman her age rarely receives. "My parents ask for my advice, and when I go back home, my neighbors treat me with a new respect," she says.