Social worker Krishna Bisht gets Janaki Devi Bajaj award

Our Correspondent

Pithoragarh, January 18

Krishna Bisht, a social worker working in the sphere of women empowerment through knitting and weaving in Almora, has been given the Janaki Devi Bajaj award 2014. She has been given the award for her contribution to empowering rural women, sources from Mahila Haat, the NGO she represents, said here today. “The award that consists of Rs 5 lakh and a citation was conferred on Bisht last week in Mumbai by women’s wing of the Indian Merchant Chamber,” they said.

According to information, the award, given every year to a woman who has done remarkable work in the sphere of empowerment of rural women by awakening them educationally and imparting to them a sense of entrepreneurship, has been conferred on Bisht for her work done in the sphere in the last 35 years through her NGO, Mahila Haat. The NGO has empowered poor villagers from the surrounding villages by giving them raw wool, training them in knitting and weaving and mobilising markets for their produce through the NGO.

“Besides mobilising markets for the woollen products of women, the NGO run by Bisht imparted formal education to the women and inculcated in them a habit of saving hard-earned money,” said Geeta Pandey, a volunteer working with the NGO at Almora.