Embracing the World is empowering 100,000 women from impoverished communities throughout South India with the skills and means to help their families make ends meet. Participants receive vocational training, start-up capital, and assistance in marketing their products and receiving microcredit loans. Empowering women in this way has proven to be one of the most effective strategies for reducing poverty throughout entire communities. Learn more.

Embracing the World places a high priority on guaranteeing the opportunity of education for all ages. From its literacy and vocational training for India's indigenous tribal population to its scholarship program supporting 100,000 of India's poorest children - girls and boys - all the way toward obtaining a university degree, Embracing the World is working to ensure that knowledge remains the birthright of all humankind. Learn more.

Since 2001, Embracing the World has been quick to respond to natural disasters. Most well-known for its $46 million Tsunami-Relief Project, our volunteers have been at ground zero in several of the decade's most devastating natural disasters, from the 2001 Gujarat Earthquake to Hurricane Katrina in the United States to the 2008 Bihar Floods, which displaced millions. With a dual focus on rapid response and extensive long-term rehabilitation, Embracing the World has developed a reputation for being first on the scene and the last to leave - long after the spotlight has faded away. Learn more.

Embracing the World believes that everyone in the world deserves to sleep without fear. It is this belief that has propelled ETW's massive homes for the homeless program. Over the last 10 years, ETW has relocated over 1600 families from wretched slums into newly constructed apartment blocks and built more than 40,000 homes for the homeless - toward a target of building 125,000 homes across India. Learn more.

Embracing the World has run a care home for 500 orphans and disadvantaged children in Kerala for the last 20 years. The children study at one of the most competitive secondary schools in the state (run by Amma's Ashram) and win awards in Sanskrit, music, sports and dance. In 2009, Amma inaugurated a second care home in Kenya - this one for more than 100 children from the slums of Nairobi. Learn more.

Embracing the World feeds more than 2 million people annually throughout India, and distributes uncooked rice, milk and other staples to deeply impoverished communities. In 40 cities throughout North America, our volunteers prepare and 73,000 meals a year for the homeless and hungry. Learn more.

Embracing the World's 1,300-bed AIMS Hospital (Kochi, Kerala) is renowned as one of the premier health-care facilities in South Asia. Since its establishment in 1998, AIMS together with its smaller satellite hospitals and medical outreach teams have provided more than $50 million worth of free medical care to patients living below the poverty line; over one million patients have been treated free of charge. Our telemedicine-enabled medical outreach teams also conduct primary health care training and intervention programs for treatable illness, bringing the best of modern medicine into the most remote areas of rural India. Learn more.

Embracing the World wants to see a world where no one slips through the cracks into invisible poverty and despair, and where everyone has a chance to see their dreams come true. With that in mind, ETW runs multiple care homes for the elderly, provides monthly financial aid for 100,000 widows and victims of poverty and disability for throughout India, offers free meditation courses for soldiers, prisoners, and the general public, sponsors weddings for the poor, and has established service-oriented youth groups throughout the world. Learn more.

A member of the United Nations Billion Tree Campaign, Embracing the World has planted over a million trees worldwide since 2001, including 100,000 trees along India's shoreline to prevent erosion. GreenFriends, our grassroots environmental organization, promotes local participation in conservation efforts around the world. Learn more.

Through Amma's Amrita University, Embracing the World volunteer researchers are breaking new ground in a broad range of highly specialized fields including nanotechnology, biotechnology, robotics, and e-learning software. Projects include tissue engineering, stem cell research, water-purification systems, and low-cost biomedical devices. On the cutting edge of emerging technologies, Embracing the World is developing haptic, biofeedback and virtual reality systems to bring vocational training capabilities into remote areas. Learn more.