Buzz Women: Bringing Forth the Power of Women in India

Uthara Narayanan arrives to greet us. A perfectly pressed cream sari drapes her long and slender frame. Her hair is cut short: professional, no fuss. Her direct gaze seems an easy tell: what you see is what you get. Except it isn’t.

Uthara had shorn her long hair to create a wig for a cancer patient. She has adopted two children with disabilities, one of them severe. Full of gratitude and drive, she still manages to lead her creation, Buzz Women, a nonprofit organization that began in Bangalore and has impacted more than 650,000 women in India, and more recently, women in Gambia, Georgia, Tanzania, and Ukraine.

“I am here to nurture low-income women in India,” says Uthara, a 2015 Acumen Fellow. “At Buzz, we organize women into community groups. We teach them to build their capabilities around the elements of Cash, Care, Climate, Community, and Confidence. Our mission is to bring forward the personal and collective power of women, creating a movement of women standing up for women. In this way, we help fight poverty to build a better world.”

Buzz relies on the women themselves to lead one another and, through this, find the strength that lies within. The organization’s technology is that of human accompaniment — the practice of holding mirrors to one another, seeing in other women what they might not see in themselves, and holding each woman to account for all they can be.

“But how do I explain what we are doing to donors who only want to see metrics for things we can count?” Uthara asks. “I have good numbers: in ten years, we’ve had $4 million in expenses, and our work has led to women saving an additional $100 million every year.”

“That’s not a bad return on investment,” she continues. “But it doesn’t capture the real changes. In some communities, women have organized themselves and collectively refused to continue the traditional practice of moving from their homes into dark and terrible shacks when they are menstruating. I can point to thousands of actions, large and small, that add up to a women’s movement of strength and empowerment. But how can I measure or even fully articulate all of the intangibles of the work of organizing and training?”

This is the work of accompaniment — the means of unlocking one another’s capacities. For people who have been overlooked for generations, it is among the most important actions we can take. Buzz is systematizing accompaniment to give women the confidence, skills, and income they need to pursue their own fulfillment.

“Freedom doesn’t mean I get to do whatever I want. Freedom means I am able to do things for others and to share with others.”

Sujatha greets us in her tidy home an hour outside of Bangalore, dressed as the businesswoman she is. She wears a silk sari patterned with reds, golds, and purples. Blue glass bangles ring both lower arms. Her freckled, sun-spotted face reflects her life farming her fields as well. Hers is a face and hands that know hard work. Married at 18, Sujatha lost her husband two years later after giving birth to a son. With only a 10th-grade education, she worked at what she could to make ends meet: farming, tailoring, cooking food at her son’s school.

And she dreamed of better things. In time, she saved enough to build her own home. Then, she took a sizable loan to allow her son to attend university. Meanwhile, she took every workshop and course she could, hoping it would lead to starting her own business. “But the trainings were wasted on me,” she lamented. “No one saw me, no one could see that I could hear words, yet do nothing with them.”

Then Buzz came along.

“I did a session on financial planning because I had gotten myself into a very stressful place, waking up at night, so fearful of all I owed.” It turned out that Sujatha didn’t fully understand her liabilities. With the growing value of her house, Buzz helped her understand that she held nearly 5 million rupees (nearly $60,000) in the value of her house, lands, and other savings; and she only owed $10,000 in debt.

That changed everything. “I got the confidence that I will be able to repay the debt by selling assets if it comes to it. Buzz accompanied me and gave me the confidence that I could do all of this. Their trust in me helped me find trust in myself.”

Sujatha decided to start a cold oil pressing business. She’d seen too much inorganic oil and was beginning to understand the power of organics. “I’m a farmer, you see. My ancestors used to live so much longer than we do today. They ate healthy food, not the processed foods we eat today. And more women, especially those touched by Buzz, are beginning to understand the relationship between healthy food and good lives.” There is a growing number of women willing to supply Sujatha with the right inputs. “And I don’t just sell oils for cooking. I also sell coconut oil because women love putting it in their hair.”

Again, she took a loan and invested in an oil press. The profits are growing, and she now dreams of building four more machines and employing ten women.

I asked her if she might ever consider remarrying given how successful she’s become through her business. “No. I wouldn’t recommend marriage,” she said. “Too many women here end up living under the thumbs of their husbands. I want the kind of freedom I get from running my own business. I want to do what is necessary for me and helpful to others. I don’t want to do unnecessary things. And if I want to give away five rupees to help another person, I do not want to have to ask someone for their permission.

“Freedom doesn’t mean I get to do whatever I want. Freedom means I am able to do things for others and to share with others.”

She went on to talk about Buzz and what she learned from being part of it. “The most important thing I’ve learned is to focus on what I can give to others, not on what I can grab for myself.” I spoke to her about accompaniment, the idea that we can hold a mirror to one another, help each other see our better selves, and solve problems we might not be able to solve alone. Sujatha kept nodding in agreement.

“Could you tell me how you might define accompaniment?” I asked. She paused. “I would say it’s what I get at Buzz — accompaniment is friendship. It is unity. It is having a companion who makes you believe in yourself.”

That sounds about right.