MA Nonprofit Empowers Women Abroad And At Home

BEDFORD, MA —The Desai Foundation may be dedicated to empowering women in India, but its roots are right here in Massachusetts.

"We've always been at the intersection of 128 and Route 3 – we've always been at the Burlington-Bedford border," said Megha Desai, President of the Desai Foundation.

The foundation empowers women in India and the U.S. through programs focused on hygiene, employment and education, among other things. The Desai Foundation focuses on sustainable development through vocational classes, health camps, community volunteer outreach, and sanitary napkin programs. The organization, to date, has impacted almost 1.5 million lives in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Maharashtra, India and Metro-Boston; and Harlem, New York.

The foundation's on-going sanitary napkin distribution program puts hundreds of rural women to work manufacturing and distributing retail-quality sanitary napkins, giving back to their communities, and enabling girls to attend school.

Desai started as a small family charity, expanding to villages in India based on word-of-mouth in the U.S. and homegrown connections. The original headquarters for the foundation were in Burlington but the foundation moved to Bedford about two years ago as it expanded into the public nonprofit realm.

In its inception, Desai was working with 20 villages in India — starting in Talangpur, a village 40 minutes outside of Surat, the foundation worked its way out to the surrounding villages. Today, Desai is in almost 900 villages in India. Megha said what makes the foundation unique and helps it thrive is its holistic approach to community development. Investing in the community and listening to community leaders on the ground is key, Megha said.

"Its been really lovely to see people all over India connecting with the work we’re doing," Megha said.

When the coronavirus pandemic hit, Desai had to re-examine its model to ensure safety and efficiency across the board and adapt to the new climate. While hundreds of programs were canceled as a result of the pandemic, Desai chose not to lay off any of its employees in the U.S. or in India. Megha said the foundation took the pandemic as an opportunity to see what its strengths were and how to utilize them. Harnessing its knowledge of menstrual hygiene, the foundation set aside donations for local pantries in Boston and New York specifically for pad and tampons.

On the ground in India, the women who had previously participated in the Foundation's sewing programs were now sewing face masks for their community and from the comfort of their homes.

"Astonishingly, these over 300 women have produced over 800,000 masks that have been distributed to vulnerable populations in the region," Megha said.

A year ago, the foundation implemented its intensive hygiene training into all of its programs and Megha said it was the best move given the current circumstances. As the foundation looks to the future, things like working from home and hygiene training will remain staples of the Desai programming.