All of us at Ladies’s World Banking are devastated to be taught the unhappy information of Viji Das’ passing. All through her life she was a robust, clear and courageous voice for ladies’s empowerment at a time when it was onerous, and generally even harmful, for such views to be expressed. Indian microfinance exists due to the imaginative and prescient of Viji Das. Due to her willingness to share that imaginative and prescient with others world wide, ladies in every single place owe a debt of gratitude to her for her braveness and willpower in selling better entry to monetary providers to ladies, lots of whom had been among the many poorest and most remoted in society.
As her life ends, so her legacy endures. Associates of Ladies’s World Banking, an establishment that Viji led since 1989, and its sister group, Ananya, that Viji based in 2009 have labored with lots of of economic establishments in India to supply monetary providers for hundreds of thousands of low earnings ladies. She was regularly the primary lender prepared to “take an opportunity” on financing newly-created microfinance establishments, together with our personal community member, Ujjivan. Her monetary and technical help enabled these organizations to have a good better influence on the lives not solely of their ladies prospects, however on their kids and their wider communities as nicely.
Though she has gone from us, Viji will all the time be a beacon to gentle the trail our collective work to empower extra ladies and assist them construct higher lives by means of entry to monetary providers. Her reminiscence will drive us to even better efforts for equality and we’ll attempt day-after-day to reflect her power, her ardour, her creativity, and her humanity.
