Ministry empowers women through tailoring schools

Anasuri, a wife and mother of two children, was haunted with anxiety daily as her family struggled to survive. Deserted by her husband for weeks at a time as he wasted their earnings on alcohol, Anasuri was without money to buy food for her children. She was losing hope and feared the future.

There are many women in India with stories like Anasuri's, and poverty traps them in hopelessness. According to the most recent census, nearly 300 million people in India live below the poverty line.

Even more staggering, the World Factbook recorded 618 million women in India over the age of 15 are illiterate and without education. Without formal training, women are obligated by the financial needs at home to work as day laborers, beggars or sometimes become entangled in prostitution.

However, Anasuri's story has a happier ending than most.

Today she is providing for her family through a sewing business that she runs out of her home, earning a wage of 150 rupees a day, almost three times the amount she could earn as a field hand.

Anasuri started her business after completing a six-month India Partners tailoring program that was founded in 1993. Over the last 18 years, India Partners has established four tailoring schools. Today, 450 women have graduated from one of the four tailoring schools founded by India Partners.

Upon completing the tailoring program, each woman receives a treadle sewing machine, empowering her to run a tailoring business from her home. Some graduates have taken on even greater endeavors, motivated by their successful graduation and newfound ability to work, such as Salagala and her husband.

Salagala and her husband were day laborers and struggled to pay their rent and buy food on their unpredictable, temporary wages. Salagala applied to the India Partners tailoring program and graduated with her own treadle sewing machine.

Empowered by her new skills, Salagala trained her husband and together they saved to purchase a second sewing machine. Equipped with two machines, this husband-wife duo started their own sewing business out of their home, earning 4,000 rupees a month.

Like Salagala, about 450 women have been able to attain sustainable incomes through tailoring schools organised by India Partners.

India Partners works alongside a broad group of indigenous Christian grassroots agencies in India focused on alleviating poverty and injustice. On the web: www.indiapartners.org