As an activist and television personality, Nivediata Chandrappa has seen the plight of immigrants, especially women. But she found most women's organizations and programs in the United States carter to educated women. The uneducated and marginalized were left at the mercy of their husbands, who were sometimes abusive too, Chandrappa said. 

That finding resulted in Wishvas, an organization aimed at financially empowering women in South Asian communities by providing them with the know-how to script their own successes. 

"Wishvas means faith, or faith in ourselves and our communities. When problems arise, usually people desert others, it is the opposite here," said Chandrappa, who focused on the life and struggles of new immigrants from India in her television show, Asian Indian Immigrant Experience, on Time Warner in Queens, New York. 

Some of the new immigrant women with little children are sometimes under cultural oppression and lack economic freedom.  

"We have started this project to help such women in need who can get assistance from us to establish their skills in sewing, crafts, computers, food preparation among others and we will help them to get micro-loans, provide them assistance to have their own home-based business once they finish the trainings," Chandrappa explained, "We will also follow up with them and help them to market their products by creating a niche market for them with the community, through our wide community network." Initially the program will focus on immigrants in Queens, New York.

"The South Asian population in Queens in an ever moving, shifting and evolving community; we have diversity and adversity in our surroundings because we come from different faiths, cultures and worlds," said Chandrappa. "Women who are caught in the cultural shift and dilemma of moving to a new country, culture and values are often left with very little resources to cope with such overwhelming experiences. Though there are organizations helping the surface casualties of this change, there is very little done to understand how to work within the cosmos of cultural surrounding and empower women and men to think out of the box. It is not even about thinking, it is steering an entire community and culture towards progress and education."

The organization will have its branded merchandize for sale by the women who make them. Chandrappa has earlier worked as a reporter in the Indian publications in New York. In India, she freelanced for the Deccan Herald and The Indian Express.  

In New York, "where immigrants flock," she said, "I have witnessed remarkable stories of people who have left their countries and families and come to this city and become like one of those vending machines. She said she started her television series in 2007 "because as a journalist I felt that there was no platform from which South Asians could gather and talk about policies, politics, faith or the economy."