"A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step”, a Japanese proverb states. The journey of Ashta No Kai began with a simple statistic that an incredible 61% of women in India were illiterate according to the 1991 census. A chance reading of “May You Be The Mother of A 100 Sons” in 1996 so shocked Founder Armene Modi, then a Professor of English in Tokyo, that she decided to set up a project to increase women’s literacy near her hometown in Pune, India. Thus ‘Ashta No Kai’ (For a Better Tomorrow) was born – to bring hope, strength and a vision of empowerment to marginalised rural women in India. Ashta No Kai is dedicated to empowering rural women. Ashta No Kai, through its efforts to promote and facilitate the capacity-building of marginalized women, aims to make a difference in rural women’s lives by providing them with the education, vocational skills, and resources they need to become economically independent and self-reliant. Ashta No Kai hopes to assist women in search of their own voices to make the transition from passive acceptance of their fate to becoming vocal and active partners in their own development.