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UNI India Liaison Council Women Committee aims at building a strong network of women across the affiliates in India.  It is expected that such a network will strengthen the affiliates and create a platform for active women to voice their concerns and share their experiences and success stories.

A pilot project has been launched with the first face-to-face kick-off meeting of two mentors and two mentees on 29 June 2014 in Kolkata.  They will work closely with mutual respect, courteous behavior and their unions’ full support.

The mentors are Sharada Bangera, President, UNI ILC Women Committee and Anjali Bedekar, UNI ILC Coordinator and the former President of UNI Apro Women's Committee.  The Mentees are Soma Ghosh, FNPO and Paromita Adhikary, AINLIEF based in Kolkata.  

After the ice breaker to get to know each other,  Sis.Anjali presented the Mentoring Project’s aims and explained the expectations from UNI ILC.   Sis.Sharada talked about the importance of the project to UNI ILC Women.  Clarifying the roles of the Mentors and Mentees, the expectations from the project and also the mutual expectations were discussed.  Sis. Soma and Sis. Paromita expressed their happiness in participating in the project on behalf of their unions.

They signed the project agreement and came up with the initial steps with timeframe, some learning points and how to regularly communicate in future, mainly using advanced IT tools to make up the physical distance.  Their first task is to help organizing the UNI ILC Women & Youth Conferences in September in Kolkata to revitalize the active participation by women (especially young women) and youth (including men) in the UNI ILC.

The Mentoring project will be an effective tool to train potential women leaders through passing on knowledge, experience and information from senior women leaders to young women and exchange new ideas and good practices.  It is expected that a small success will breed bigger success in future.