Women Empowerment

Celebration of International day of elimination of violence against women ( November 25, 2011)
Venue: Mayur Nagar, Thatipur and “Family counselling Centre”Gwalior(M.P.)

SETU organized a local community meeting with women residing at Thatipur, Gwalior (M.P.) to draw attention to ‘eliminate violence against women’. These women belonged to the vulnerable section of society. Mr. L R Kaushal & Ms Gulmohar Matta (SETU team members) discussed the impact of this on the mental structure on women as well as on their children. They also enlightened them about some ways & solutions that can be thought off. Reasons on why the women are forced to suffer were discussed in details. Some of the points discussed were:

• How apprehension of speaking out and confronting the society makes her suffer more.
• Motivation to share and speak about what’s going wrong with one self or perhaps in one’s neighborhood.
• To stand against such violence and those people who are committing crime
• The ill effects on family members, etc.
• How to seek professional help and support available from various Govt. & Non-Govt. Agencies.

SETU team also visited “Council Centre” Gwalior to interview some brave women who had guts to be bold enough to fight with their problems. These women are now combating for their rights and the government organizations are helping them with their court cases, schooling, clothing, and food along with training them to learn vocational trades so that they can be self-sustainable. SETU hopes to provide them with livelihood opportunities to make them self-sustainable.

Celebrating womanhood- SETU observes International women’s day (8th March 2011)

SETU believes in empowering women for a dignified living and with this view on the occasion of International women’s day, SETU organized a “tailoring workshop for sustainability” for the underprivileged and marginalized women of an urban slum at Gwalior.

The workshop was attended by 42 women of the community. SETU team member L.R. Kaushal presided the workshop along with our master trainer Mr. Sunil Dutt. Other SETU team members were also present on the occasion. Sunil showed the women how to make environment friendly cotton/recycled sari bags. He gave some shorthand tips on how to efficiently use the fabric and get the perfect finish.

Women were made aware of the fact that use of polythenes are now banned in Gwalior and therefore making and selling of tailored bag from cotton fabric & recycled saris can prove to be a good source of sustainabilty .In addition to this, demonstrations on making recycled newspaper paper bags and some easy tips on marketing of the environment friendly bags were given.In the workshop, issues of reproductive health of women were also discussed. The response to the workshop was overwhelming as women liked the concept of training and want the tailoring program to be extended over a period of 15 days. We will try our level best to fulfill their wish and provide them with vocational training.

Community development for Artisans at “Jagnapura Laghedi”- an urban slum at Gwalior (2nd Feb 2011)

Life is sometimes too harsh for some people. Food and water which are life’s basic necessities are not an easy affair for many. This is true for the people of Jagnapura Laghedi, an urban slum at Gwalior where SETU team made a visit.

The sole source of income for the residents here is embroidery on sarees which women of the family do from their homes. The male members work on daily wages and do not earn regularly. Consequently, it’s the art which makes the houses run.

It takes about 100-150 Rs. in doing embroidery on one saree, involving two mandays, out of which the artisans get only 50-60 Rs. as the remaining amount goes in buying raw materials for the work.

Artisans here do not have any loan facility available from the government; this is a matter of serious concern as many artisans said they need loans to start a new venture and wish to send their children to school with the money. Another area of grave concern is the fact that most of the houses don’t have any built in toilets, in the absence of which people have to face inconvenience.

SETU is trying to provide the artisans with vocational training so that they can become self sustainable & increase their earning. Also, efforts are being made to create Self Help Groups (SHGs) among the community for their overall development. This will not only aid them economically but also generate self confidence in them.

Workshop at SABALA – updating the artisans with latest color trends and enhancing their craft skills- (August 2010)

SETU organized a technical workshop at one of our artisan groups `SABALA’ in the arid villages of Bijapur, Karnataka. It is an all women’s organization dedicated to the empowerment of Women and Children.

With a view to improve the skills of artisans and to update them with the latest colour trends a workshop was organized at SABALA.

Highlights of the workshop:

• Updating the artisans with Trend Forecasts for spring summer 2011
• Quiz on colors
• Rangoli competition
• Embroidery competition
• Discussion on
• Women empowerment
• Girl child education
• Nutrition, health and hygiene

The women artisans produce beautiful designs, their only weakness being that they are not aware of the latest trends in the market place and therefore sometimes make products not in line with the taste of foreign consumers. Keeping in view this fact; a workshop was organized to make the artisans aware about the latest color trends. The basic components of color & design were discussed at length in the workshop. Artisans were given basic knowledge on trend forecasts, how the forecasts are made, who decides the trends for a particular year and how, which are the famous fashion houses and similar such stuff.

Artisans were given a questionnaire comprising of simple questions on colors. This was just to assess their knowledge about colors; more specifically their interpretation of colors and how they make use of it while designing a product.

Another fun filled activity was the rangoli competition where the artisans were asked to make beautiful rangoli designs by deciding the colors on their own. Artisans made a variety of designs, each one different from the other. Those who made the best ones were given prizes at the end.

As a feedback to the workshop, an embroidery task was given to the artisans to know that to what an extent they have gained from the session. Results were positive as all artisans made beautiful designs and with proper color combinations.

Towards the end, artisans were asked to share their views on social issues related to women and child development. The following topics were discussed:

• Women empowerment
• Girl child education
• Nutrition, health and hygiene

Some women artisans really surprised us with their protagonist views on such sensitive issues. One of the women speaking on the topic of women empowerment, when asked the real meaning of it replied “main aaj bahar kaam kar rahi hoon yahi women empowerment hai” (I am able to work out of my home that’s women empowerment). Listening to this, the entire house filled with applause.

To motivate the artisans a large number of prizes were distributed at the end of workshop.

“Development cannot be achieved if fifty percent of the population is excluded from the opportunities it brings.”

Helen Clark, UNDP administrator

Indian society by its very nature is highly biased against women. Though being considered as Goddess, the place of women in India is debilitating. Being considered a liability, right from childhood a women learns to sacrifice her desires at every single step; in the name of “compromise”. Even in this era of 21rst century where change is the buzzword not much has “changed” for women, which can be inferred clearly from the gender equality ratio 880 females per 1000 males and the number is decreasing with each passing day…

Women are discriminated and marginalized at every level of the society; be it social participation, economic opportunity and economic participation, political participation, access to education or access to nutrition and reproductive health care.

Education is still a distant dream for many of those residing in the rural areas of India despite the fact that there are many programmes being run by the Indian government for girl education. Women generally do not have a say in the decision making process of the family due to the very fact that they are not the breadwinners. Being financially dependent, they suffer from atrocities like domestic violence, are unwillingly forced to give birth, do not have a right to decide for their children’s future and also do not even have access to proper healthcare facilities.

Many women from the poor backgrounds fall victims of child marriage, slavery, prostitution and other evils prevalent in the society and spend their entire lives in darkness. Women become soft target to these all and many other evils because of illiteracy, lack of awareness & opportunities and financial dependency.

A women empowered means a family empowered.

Education & financial independence empowers a woman. An empowered woman gains respect in her family & society, can take decisions for herself & her family, has her say, can resist domestic exploitation and live a decent life according to her own choice.

SETU continuously strives to make women self-sustainable by spreading awareness, developing their traditional skills, assuring equal & fair wages, advance payments, providing them opportunities & marketing platform, arranging workshops etc. 80 % of our partner artisan groups are women organizations whose main focus area is the socio-economic transformation of women.

In addition to making them self-sustainable, SETU also organizes health camps, reproductive & child health programs, free health insurance, information on making SHGs (self help groups), counseling etc.

SETU works for women in various states of India in the following stages:

1. Initiate interaction with women of specific group/ community in question.
2. Know their traditional skills if any and develop accordingly
3. Know their work pattern behavior and motivate accordingly.
4. Know their domestic need priorities and accordingly suggest spacing for small income generative activities.
5. Motivate them for forming SHGs and create awareness about small income generative activities in SHGs and raise income for self sustainability and self empowerment.
6. To motivate, educate, and train them for production, quality control and organized marketing of their skills/art forms or other suitable and viable activities to develop sustainable income generative resource, necessary for survival and growth.
7. To help them and their group or community to avail access of global market for their produced handicrafts, educate them to learn fast the global market trends and keep pace with their skills.

Given below is a glimpse of some of our activities undertaken for women empowerment.

Eye check up camp for women artisans of the desert areas (May 2010)

For artisans, art is their soul. It assumes the highest priority for them not only because it is their source of income but also something very close to their heart, being an inheritance of their forefathers which they cherish throughout their lives. Art is their identity. A majority of the art, be it embroidery, appliqué work, hand block printing, bell making or anything else requires intensive use of eyes. Eyes are the most important tools for an artisan and this is especially true for those who do minute work like embroidery. Most of the artisans lack the awareness for proper eye care and medical check up. Another reason for neglecting their eyes is the fact that artisans can’t afford the medical checkups and treatment and therefore sometimes continue to suffer from eye ailments. In many interior desert areas, artisans live in small & scattered hamlets with no medical facility available for many miles.

To help the artisans in this regard, we organized a free `eye checkup camp’ for the poor artisans living in the remote desert areas near Barmer, Rajasthan in association with our partner NGO known as SURE who actively works for the upliftment of the rural population in that area

In the camp, around 326 poor rural women artisans and their families belonging to the remote villages of `Vindani’, `Gafan’, `Navatala’, `Sarupe ka tala’ and `Samelon ka tala’ in Rajasthan were given free eye check up by a qualified ophthalmologist.

Facilities provided in the camp were:

1. Free eye check up
2. Distribution of good quality spectacles
3. Distribution of free medicines
4. Identification of patients for eye-surgeries ( these will be later operated upon at subsidized rates)
5. Follow up after the camp

Initially, the women were slightly skeptical of the whole process as for some it’s their very first time. But as some of them got their eyes checked, the slightest doubts were cleared.

A total of 120 people were diagnosed to have poor vision i.e. weak eyesight. Out of these, 110 were women artisans and the rest belonged to other categories. All these 120 patients were provided (free of cost) with good quality eye glasses, for their vision correction. In addition to this, around 54 people, diagnosed with acute eye ailments were advised to get operated. They will be helped to get eye surgeries at subdised rates. Also, free medicines were distributed in the camp. The feedback of the camp was positive as people want more such camps to be organized.

Health insurance for Women artisans

In an effort to provide health facilities to the rural women artisans, SETU sponsors health insurance for a family of four costing Rs. 200 per family covering a period of one year.

Gyneaecological check up and HIV/AIDS awareness and testing at Reshampura-Badnapura on 12th Nov. 2009

The villages of Badnapura and Reshampura are inhabited by the people of Bedia community. Bedia is a traditional sex worker community. They have been living here for more than 50 years. The history of this community shows that in olden times, the Royal families and local lords, promoted this community for their entertainment because of their expertise in signing and dancing. With time, this became a profession for this community and developed into full-fledged prostitution trade.

Further, this village is very near to Gwalior Transport Nagar through which about 3500 trucks pass everyday. Of these, about 500-700 trucks halt here every day and their stay could vary between 5 hours to 3 days.

The aim of the one day health camp was to make the rural areas aware of the issues like “HIV/AIDS’ and ‘Family Planning’ and to provide them with best medical treatment & expertise health check-up , free of cost , at their door step.

1. To provide free medicines and medical treatment for the people..
2. Identification, testing for HIV/AIDS.
3. Motivating women and make them aware of their health related issues.
4. Uplift the community through awareness generation, health education, and strength building.
5. We also aimed to connect the schools and Anganwadis with the community by taking them along with us for promoting education, health awareness and sanitary issues.
6. Emphasizing on Information Education and Communication resulting in generation of awareness and change in the social scenario for women.
7. Address entire population to bring about the relevant behavioral changes for improved health practices

Following facilities were provided in the camp:

1. Free Gynecological check up
2. Distribution of medicines free of cost. The medicines included generic medicines, antibiotics, contraceptives, multivitamins etc
3. Free AIDS testing, maintaining confidentiality of reports
4. Awareness about reproductive & child health issues.
5. Follow up after the camp

In the camp, it was found that many of the women were ignorantly suffering from serious gynecological problems for many years ( some were suffering even from last 20 years) The main reasons being illiteracy and the lack of access to avail medical treatment. All the check ups were done under the supervision of an expert gynecologist, Dr. Pooja Mundra (M.S., gynae & obstetrics) and the medicines prescribed were given free of cost . Also, the women were assured of free follow up after the camp.

AIDS testing was not an easy one to carry out. Initially the people were skeptical of being tested for AIDS but when they were assured of confidentiality about their reports, they opened up. “Prevention is better than cure”, following this phrase, condoms and contraceptives were distributed free of cost among the target population.

Kala Raksha Vidyalaya

“Kala Raksha” means “Protecting art”. At SETU consortium, we greatly value the conservation of handmade, cultural and artistic talents.

In our experiences, we have noticed that many art forms are becoming extinct. Unfair trade practices make artisans go out of business, provide mundane work at factories that doesn’t require artistic skills, and ultimately stop the passing of knowledge from one generation to the next. Thus, younger people do not inherit the artistic skills their forefathers created, since they render it useless in a “modern” world.

SETU is committed to keep art alive. Kala Raksha Vidyalaya is a school in Gujarat, India that provides vocational training in the traditional art forms to the local women. The aim is for rural people to practice and preserve the art of this region. We provide direct financial help to support this project, which nurtures many of the art forms used to create our products. Furthermore, we provide the artisans with information necessary to create more fashionable and marketable products, so they have a better chance to compete against big factories.

Girl child awareness programme at Dahod, Gujarat

SETU sponsored an educational awareness program for the education of `Girl child’ amongst tribal community the villages of Dahod District.

The program was brought into action through one of our artisan groups in Gujarat. In the program, the campaigning team interacted with various girls where the team explained the benefits of girl child education not only to the girls but also to their mothers. Initially the mothers were slightly skeptical about the idea of girl child education and were not sure about it as they were of the view that its better that girls should do household work as this only will help them once they get married and there’s no use of educating them. Also if the girls get educated, it would be difficult to find a suitable match for them. These all doubts were cleared by the team and ultimately the team got them convinced.