Mumbai: Anne Ferrer, who was born in Essex, England, in 1947 and has been an Indian citizen and social worker in rural Andhra Pradesh for half a century, on Tuesday received the prestigious Jamnalal Bajaj Award for her outstanding contribution to the welfare of rural women and children.

Ferrer, who has been working tirelessly for the progress of disadvantaged women and children for decades, received the award at the National Centre for Performing Arts this evening on World Aids Day.

The girl who arrived in India at the age of 16 as part of an adventurous journey with her family continued her studies, worked as a journalist, met Vicente Ferrer, a Spanish philanthropist, for an interview and was so impressed by his work with the poor in Manmad, Maharashtra, that she eventually became his life and work partner.

They founded the Rural Development Trust called RDT with Ananthapuram district of Andhra Pradesh as their base in 1969. This marked the beginning of their development work for the poorest of poor rural communities as well as changing the landscape of Ananthapuram which is the second driest district in India with recurring droughts severely affecting rural livelihoods.

Through their tireless efforts, the Ferrers built a committed team that comprised of mostly locals and worked with an approach that building up strong community based organisations ensured people as the main stakeholders in the process of their own development while on the other promoted gender equality at all levels.

RDT today has over 2400 employees cut across sectors — namely education, women, health, including hospitals, community/institution based rehabilitation of persons with disabilities, ecology, habitat, sports and culture. Programmes of development of RDT are now expanded to more than 650,000 poor families in over 3300 villages in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana states. This includes over 10,200 families belonging to Chenchus, an aboriginal tribe living along Nallamala forests.

Though her husband died in 2009, she has carried on the legacy and the good work that has expanded extensively. She says, in the initial days, the participation of women didn’t exist in any of the developmental programmes.

Rural women who were confined to their homes had no awareness of their rights. It was a journey of a couple of decades to get the women to speak up, come out of their houses, and sensitise them about the right to education and basic knowledge of health care for their children.

There are now 8,000 self help groups comprising over 100,000 women who are able to work independently and play a key role in development programmes. They are provided an access to revolving funds managed by rural women. An average of 20,000 women access loans for various income generating schemes such as milk cattle and small businesses.