She intends to bike over 11,111 kms of India’s boundary to raise awareness about gender
inclusion in sustainable mobility. Jai Bharathi started off on her bike journey
from Hyderabad on October 11th. It has already been a bit of an eventful
journey. The rains in Kerala required some change in plans but along with her
group of five, she managed and made it to Goa.
Starting from Hyderabad, she has covered
Bangalore, Chennai, Kochi and would now be covering Pune, Mumbai, Surat,
Ahmedabad, Udaipur, Jaipur, Amritsar, Srinagar, Chandigarh, New Delhi, Lucknow,
Allahabad, Patna, Guwahati, Kolkata, Ranchi, Bhubaneshwar, among others.
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The campaign, called Moving Boundaries, seeks to promote
awareness on the importance of women acquiring the power of driving and
travelling safely to expand their horizons in all aspects of their lives. The
focus is on enabling women to not only learn driving but also own electric
vehicles to generate income which in turn can also reduce carbon emissions from
transport. Under this campaign, Jai Bharathi, founder of MOWO is touring India
on her motorbike for a period of over 40 days and covering over 20 cities to
create awareness and encourage women to learn driving to increase their job
opportunities.
The campaign is an initiative by Shell Foundation, a UK based
charity and the UK Government in association with Moving Women Social
Initiatives Foundation (MOWO). Under this campaign they hope to encourage women
to pick up driving skills and remove roadblocks within the ecosystem to
increase their job prospects in transportation businesses including as taxi and
e-rickshaw drivers or as delivery agents for e-commerce companies.
Commenting on ‘Moving Boundaries’, Ms. Jai Bharathi, Founder of
MOWO said “Women all over the world face restrictions on their mobility. They
are unable to travel long distances to acquire decent education or take up jobs
which involve complex or unsafe commutes which results in a restricted pool of
job opportunities. I am very excited to take on this 40-day journey on my
motorbike across the country to meet women from all strata and hold workshops
to make driving an aspirational and achievable employment choice for them.
Creating a safe environment where women have access to reliable transportation
and they can drive their own vehicles to earn a living is a great way to
increase employment opportunities for women in a sector which has predominantly
been male-centric.”
Speaking on the partnership, Mrs. Shipra Nayyar of Shell
Foundation said, “We launched ‘Moving Boundaries’ to promote safe, affordable,
and clean transportation for women for better access to basic amenities like
healthcare, education, and jobs. The focus is also to create an environment
whereby more women can enter the workforce by learning how to drive and
becoming owner-entrepreneurs of their vehicles in the transportation linked
sectors such as e-rickshaws and as delivery agents. Our ambition is to enable
equal access to opportunities for women by helping them become more mobile”.
Speaking of her experience on the road, Jai Bharathi said it was
always interesting and she always made it a point to start early and get off
the road in the evening when the sun was setting. The roads after that were too
unpredictable with the traffic. I have to also think of my crew of five who are
recording the journey and travelling in the car. I have done a 17,000 km
journey from Chennai to Vietnam. They are all very interesting and this will
also be one.”
One
wishes her all the best and more women are enthused to take up riding long
journeys and importantly women sign up to learn to handle electric vehicles
which could dramatically alter the landscape of their lives.
