Silence to Symphony
Lijo Chacko of the 2017 cohort of the Yale Global Executive Leadership Program writes about the Mauna Dhwani Foundation, a social enterprise founded in Odisha, India that is committed to empowering marginalized tribal women and their families.
Founded in 2017 in Odisha, India, the Mauna Dhwani Foundation is a social enterprise committed to empowering marginalized tribal women and their families. It works across 92 villages and 3 blocks, reviving handloom weaving, promoting natural dyeing, addressing malnutrition, and providing digital and academic education to tribal children. ‘Mauna Dhwani’ translates to ‘the sound of silence’, reflecting its vision to give voice to those unheard, transforming quiet resilience into a collective symphony of change.
Before Mauna Dhwani had a name, it had a soul. And that soul was Bindu Vinodhan. Bindu, the Founder and Executive Director of Mauna Dhwani, had spent over two decades in the corporate world, leading learning and organizational development. But then at a certain point, she felt called to something deeper. When she saw the plight of the women weavers, a stubborn seed of belief germinated within her that communities left behind by progress could and must find their voice again. Even in those early days, there was an understanding that silence was not emptiness but a reservoir of potential. It was about letting hope take root by restoring dignity.
From 8 women in 2018, they are now a growing community of 800+ women artisans with 17 community-based weaving centers. Today, they weave not just fabric but futures. Mauna Dhwani remains anchored in its founding values: care, courage, commitment, collaboration. It lives by its philosophy of community focus, optimism, respect, and ethics.
A Question That Changed Everything
The village of Chuliaposi in Odisha, mirrored everything Mauna Dhwani set out to change. Marginalized tribal communities faced drying lands, low literacy, and fading crafts. But the greatest poverty wasn’t of material, it was of hope. When Raghu Mausa, an elder in the village, softly asked Bindu, “Will you come back?”, it wasn’t a casual question—it was a call to action.
True change begins not with grand plans but with the willingness to walk alongside—with respect, with patience, and hands willing to build. Mauna Dhwani’s goals were elemental: to rekindle self-esteem, to revive livelihoods by reclaiming the lost art of tribal weaving, to restore ancient natural dyeing practices that had survived since 3 BCE.
The first center was set up in a livestock shed—it was as romantic as it could be. Eight brave women from Chuliaposhi came forward, and together with Bindu, they cleaned it, repaired it, and installed looms. As Raghu Mausa touched a loom after 25 years, the unbridled tears of an artist reunited with his own hands were a testament to what Mauna Dhwani had ignited. Together, they built not just infrastructure, but a return of identity and trust.
From weaving came wages, from wages came pride, from pride came community defence against exploitation. When two drunk men tried to violate the sanctity of the center, it was the women, newly armed with chappals and courage, who drove them out. The silent movement had found its voice.
Nourishing the Body, Mind, and Spirit
But livelihood alone was not enough. Malnutrition among children and women was alarmingly high. Education, too, needed to move beyond tokenism. Mauna Dhwani's after-school program and digital classrooms were not only to teach, but to ignite imaginations.
The people of Chuliaposi, Sunapal, Atanati, and beyond glimpsed a world once unimaginable, a world where tradition and technology dance together through initiatives like ‘Soil to Shelf’, the local cotton farming aimed at a zero carbon footprint within an integrated community-based livelihood cluster, and ‘Neivedya’, a community kitchen rooted in the philosophy that food offered with respect nourishes holistically. Mauna Dhwani also reaffirms its commitment to sustainable, climate-resilient agriculture, a reminder that communities must nourish both the soil and their souls.
Impacting Global Goals
In India, Mauna Dhwani impacts Sustainable Development Goals (SDG): 1 (No Poverty), 2 (Zero Hunger), 3 (Good Health & Well-being), 5 (Gender Equality), 12 (Responsible Consumption), and 13 (Climate Action). It’s not just about weaving fabric—it’s about weaving dignity, imagination, and possibility into every strand.
Mauna Dhwani launched Tanta Sathi, a leadership program identifying and training local women as trainers and center heads. These women now manage and sustain the 17 centers independently.
A Vital Voices Fellow and alumnus of Oxford and the Global Ambassadors Program, Bindu combines compassion with discipline. Her ethos is change that is built on trust, not transactions. We must serve in a way that makes us redundant, letting communities stand firmer than us. Mauna Dhwani is still a work in progress. Perhaps it will be for a while. But as long as one woman earns her first honest wage, as long as one child dreams beyond the horizon of the village, as long as one loom hums back to life, the silence will continue to sing.
And we will watch in quiet awe as Mauna Dhwani transforms silence into symphony.
