Walmart's programme on critical life skills trains 12,000 women in India

The Walmart Foundation and Swasti Health Resource Center (Swasti) on Tuesday announced that over 12,000 women working in 30 factories across three states - Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat - have been trained as part of a programme it has been conducting along with Swasti from 2012.

The training programme in India, launched by Swasti with funding from the Walmart Foundation, teaches critical life skills related to communication, hygiene, reproductive and occupational health and safety, identifying personal strengths and gender sensitivity.

The Women in Factories programme is part of the larger Walmart Women's Economic Empowerment (WEE) initiative, which aims to train nearly 1 million women, increase sourcing from them, and in doing so, improve their lives. Since its launch, the WEE initiative has helped provide job training, market access and career opportunities to women across the globe.

Walmart and the Walmart Foundation have contributed more than $79 million in grants toward programmes to empower women. Of this, about $10 million has been spent in India, one of the countries included in the global Women in Factories programme

Nancy Kielty, vice-president, Global Sourcing, Walmart, told reporters: "We are committed to the communities and people in our supply chain. So it is important to us that this training is helping to empower women."

The programme would touch 60,000 women in 150 factories in India, Bangladesh, China, El Salvador and Honduras by the end of 2016.