AIWC half-yearly conference opens in Delhi

The All India Women’s Conference (AIWC) is holding its half-yearly business conference in New Delhi from July 11 to 13, 2026, hosted by the Ujjawal Women’s Association, an East Delhi branch of the 99-year-old national women’s organisation, with the formal inauguration on July 12 at Gandhi Peace Foundation featuring Laxmi Singh, Commissioner of Police, Gautam Buddh Nagar, who made history in 2022 by becoming the first woman police commissioner in Uttar Pradesh.

Around 150 members from branches across the country are attending the three-day conference to discuss the work carried out by approximately 500 AIWC branches and to deliberate on challenges faced during voluntary work across different states.

Laxmi Singh, the chief guest, has said that when power and social awareness come together, the impact is greater. She will inaugurate the conference at 10 am on July 12. The guest of honour is Prof Bejon Mishra, an international expert on consumer focus and currently Chairman of the core group of experts constituted by the Ministry of Ayush, Government of India.

AIWC was established in 1927 and is one of India’s oldest and most prominent national-level non-governmental organisations focused on women’s welfare and empowerment. The organisation holds business conferences twice a year, rotating the hosting responsibility among its various branches spread across the country. At these conferences, branches present and discuss the work they have undertaken, and the organisation’s national leadership frames programmes based on the needs that emerge from different regions.

This year’s half-yearly conference is being hosted by Ujjawal Women’s Association, a branch established in 1989 in East Delhi and affiliated with AIWC. The association is enrolled with NGO Darpan, the civil society portal of NITI Aayog. It runs tailoring courses, beautician courses, candle-making courses, and other handicraft training programmes and has trained over 10,000 girls and women in different skills since its founding. It is currently also running computer courses with support from AIWC.

The conference format reflects one of the practical strengths of a national organisation with geographically distributed branches: it allows representatives from different parts of the country to compare the problems they encounter in the field and collectively work out how they can be addressed.