About Our Students

WEP serves students from an urban and rural populations – in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, villages south east of Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, and in a slum area in Bangalore, Karnataka. Despite different environments, WEP students face many of the same problems. Their parents recognize that higher education is a means to a better standard of living, yet as uneducated daily-wage workers, who live on $1-$2 a day, they cannot fund tuition, books, or transportation. Students who seek WEP’s support frequently are unprepared for the college classroom. They face daily challenges of limited access to potable water, congested homes, power outages, debts, domestic responsibilities, pollution, malnutrition and illnesses. WEP students are the first in their families to graduate from high school and college. They are often the first to prepare for formal sector employment. Keystone Belief It is WEP’s keystone belief that, the decisions its alumnae make as self-reliant, informed and responsible citizens and role models for other poor women, effect lasting social change in the family, workplace, and neighborhood. WEP believes that these women have a voice that needs to be heard. As trained changemakers, through the community of WEP centers, each called “light” in the local language, they will have a voice to participate in the dialogue of the world’s most acute social and environmental problem – problems to which they live closest and know most about.