A women-owned tribal economic empowerment institution.
Not a packaged-water project. Not a rural manufacturing project. Hareli exists to build India's largest women-owned rural manufacturing federation — an institution designed to outlast any single grant, contract or founder.
Photograph — Santal community members, Jharkhand. Source image unavailable; caption preserved.
Wikimedia Commons ↗
Economic exclusion is structural, not incidental.
- Women remain economically excluded across large parts of rural and tribal India.
- Most self-help groups remain low-income, with rural manufacturing participation negligible.
- Community ownership of productive assets is rare; women seldom control industrial enterprises.
As a result, household incomes remain low, migration persists, wealth leaves communities, and women stay dependent on external employers.
A federation owned by tribal and rural women, layer by layer.
Women's collectives feed village institutions, which feed federation governance, which owns community manufacturing, regional brands and market access — so that the wealth those brands generate returns to the federation, not to an outside employer.
See the full seven-layer modelFive commitments, five-year horizon.
Sustainable women's livelihoods
Target: 10,000+ women engaged directly in federation enterprise.
Community-owned productive assets
Target: a manufacturing ecosystem held under federation ownership.
Local value addition
Target: keep wealth circulating inside rural communities, not extracted from them.
Women leaders, developed deliberately
Target: leadership at village, block, district and federation level.
A replicable model
Target: replication across multiple districts and, in time, states.
"Hareli is not merely a development project. It is an attempt to create a women-owned economic institution capable of generating wealth, leadership, dignity and opportunity for rural and tribal communities over multiple generations."
"The objective is not charity. The objective is ownership."
What Hareli is not seeking capital for.
Bottling plants, buildings, vehicles and machinery are implementation tools, not the ask. The same expenditure is often deployed toward this infrastructure later — but the narrative, and the accountability, stay mission-centred throughout.
We ask for support toward:
- Women's economic empowerment
- Livelihood creation and community wealth creation
- Institution building and capacity development