Empowerment of 400,000 Adolescent Girls in India

For International Women’s Day

There are leaders who build careers. And there are leaders who build something far more important.

Manisha Khale is the second kind.

She arrived in Pachod, Maharashtra, India, in 1978, in her 20s and co-founded the Institute of Health Management Pachod (IHMP).  An organisation with a history that stretches across two continents, sustained by decades of dedication from well-wishers in the UK — but that is a story for another time.

Manisha never really left. And that decision — to stay, to build, to keep going — changed the lives of over seven million people.

In 2003, her former professor from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine visited her in Pachod. He looked at twenty-five years of work and asked one question:

"You keep insisting that Life Skills Education has empowered adolescent girls. Where is the evidence?"

Manisha didn't defend herself.

She sat with adolescent girls — endlessly, patiently — until she understood what empowerment meant in their own words. She designed a measurement scale grounded entirely in their perceptions.

That scale is still in use today.

This is what real leadership looks like. Not defending your assumptions. Going back to the people you serve and asking them to teach you.

She came as a nutritionist with one mission: prevent malnutrition in children and low birth weight in newborns. Across five decades— child marriages delayed, adolescent girls empowered, and generations of communities in Maharashtra transformed.

Seven million people. One woman. Five decades.

This International Women's Day — this one is for Manisha Khale Who stayed. Who built. Who shaped what came next.

The first photo is of Manisha handing over a cycle key to an adolescent girl to help her to get to the nearby school to continue her education.

The second photo is of Manisha handing a scholarship for college to an adolescent girl