Vishnu Varma. A Kudumbashree worker involved in community farming near the Kerala village of Kadakkanad. Around 260,000 workers currently till and harvest more than 60,000 acres throughout the state.

Thanks to India Ink, and Vishnu Varma, for this article about several million women, in communities across the state where we call home, collaborating their way to empowerment:

ERNAKULAM, Kerala — In a country that has been criticized as lacking commitment to women’s rights, one program in the southwest state of Kerala has been quietly serving as an example that a government can indeed successfully empower women, both economically and socially.

The program, Kudumbashree, meaning “family prosperity” in Malayalam, the local language, was started in 1998 by the then-Communist government to fight poverty through female emancipation and the collaborative effort of local self-governments.

It started with a few thousand women, but now Kudumbashree counts nearly 3.7 million women as members, who have collected a total of 16.9 billion rupees, or $276.7 million, in the form of a thrift.

READ the whole story here.