Women and young girls in rural India continue to navigate layered social, cultural, and economic barriers that limit their access to resources, decision-making power, and participation in economic opportunities. These constraints often render their strengths and aspirations invisible, particularly for first-generation women entrepreneurs who have limited exposure to markets, finance, or enterprise role models. Recognising this gap, Brave Spaces was conceptualised as a systemic prototype that reimagines empowerment not as something delivered to women, but as something they co-create, articulate, and lead, with entrepreneurship emerging as a critical pathway.

Building on earlier learnings, a new Brave Space was recently formed in Mauranipur, Jhansi, in partnership with the Jhansi Ki Rani Cluster Level Federation (CLF). Designed as a participatory and reflective forum, the Brave Space enables women to surface, name, and document their entrepreneurial aspirations - often for the first time while collectively examining the socio-cultural and infrastructural barriers shaping their everyday realities. Using tools such as the Problem Tree activity, women identified region-specific challenges including lack of toilet facilities, poor road infrastructure, limited mobility, constrained access to finance, and restricted decision-making power, factors that directly influence their ability to start or grow enterprises.

Crucially, the Brave Space functions as a safe and enabling environment where ideas move from being internalised hopes to articulated possibilities. The Mauranipur Brave Space once again underscores the model’s core strength: its ability to adapt to local contexts. As Brave Spaces continue to evolve, they remain a critical early-stage platform for women to unlearn limiting social conditioning, reclaim their narratives as economic actors, and lay the groundwork for inclusive, locally rooted entrepreneurship and socio-economic growth.