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It's Time To Give Back To Society: Dr. Rennie Joyy

In a recent interview with BW Applause and Everything Experiential, Dr. Rennie Joyy spoke about her passion and upcoming event- Women Achievers Awards

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Dr. Rennie Joyy is the founder of Aalekh Foundation, a non-profit organisation founded in 2015, based in India that works towards empowering women and children. She has a diverse professional background, having worked in senior management positions at multinational banks and currently working as a corporate legal professional. 

Her passion for social causes and giving back to society led her to establish Aalekh Foundation. Through this organisation, she aims to empower women and children by providing them with education, vocational training, and healthcare facilities.

In addition to her work with Aalekh Foundation, she has also provided advisory services to several renewable energy projects, helped secure technology tie-ups, and advised companies in the skill sector. She has used the knowledge and expertise gained from these experiences to further the goals of the foundation.

In a recent interview with BW Applause and Everything Experiential, Dr. Rennie Joyy spoke about her passion for giving back to society and her upcoming event- Women Achievers Awards. Here are edited excerpts from the interview.

From a successful banker to set up a top law firm and now Aalekh, how has the journey been so far?

When I started my career at CitiBank in 2000, it was a new sales team that was put up and I was the only woman in that male-dominated field. It was a time when people weren't used to it. And then when I moved from Citi to GE and we started the sales team of loans, I was again the only woman in the team handling DSA setups.

So, I realised that as you move up the ladder it’s not easier for women to do so. This fact was at the back of my mind and in 2015 I realised that it was time to give something back to society.

As a law professional and understanding Finance, and these two being very important for anybody to know their fundamental rights, we started to look at women’s rights, gender equality, and equality in social stature. It was not about donating because that is something that I've been always doing.

I wanted it to be something about giving back, helping the underprivileged and employability, for which even if I changed 10 lives, I think I would have affected maybe 100 in the course of it. So that's how it started.

What is the focus of the foundation right now and what have been some of the impact stories in the last eight years?

Over the last eight-odd years the focus areas include-girl child education, and skill development, which is to create entrepreneurship and employability among the youth, especially women, and women's health.

We are also focused on sustainable development which is not limited to climate change alone. If we talk about impact stories, we have a self-help group in Jaunpur in UP where we have created employability for about 10 to 15 women in terms of producing and making organic pickles.

We started off with pickle making and now we're moving on to other things where they are learning to tie up with NSDC, certain programs like digital learning, embroidery, beautician courses, etc.

Tell me more about the girl child education that you are working on?

We have also been sponsoring girl children in terms of education. So when we say sponsorship, we handhold them. So if we adopt them, our idea is to take care of them till they're in higher education. We have tied up with a couple of companies that are providing certified courses in terms of skilling.

You are also hosting the Women Achievers Awards, what was the process like and the response to it?

We envisaged this award around the time when India decided to get into the G20 Presidency.

Women have a very important role to play in the G20 tracks, I think any of those tracks can be delivered by a lot of input from women. So the idea is to celebrate women

We announced the award on the 8th of March 2023 and we received more than hundred 150 entries across the country in various categories.

An eminent jury comprising of Shri KJ Alphons ( former Union cabinet minister for culture & tourism), Anoop Kumar Mittal( former CMD NBCC), Reva Nayyar( Chairperson Bal Sahyog & former Secretary ), S Y Quaraishi ( former Chief election commissioner of India ), and Uma Suresh Prabhu( CSR committee ) HEAD IFFCO TOKYO general insurance Co. decided the final award recipients.

We finally have 20 women achievers and three-lifetime achiever awards. The significance of the 20 is that it's a G20 program and we want to felicitate 20 women for it.



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