Faizunnisa, our program volunteer from Kurnool is yet another example of how given an opportunity, women with leadership and commitment towards marginalized women’s advancement, can do wonders with a little financial and capacity building support. She started with a Nirnaya fellowship, which helped her to address issues of child labor in the area by counseling the parents and making education attractive enough for the children. She has got several children into the government sponsored child labor school.

While organizing Muslim and dalit women into self-help groups she found that some women were keen on learning zari / zardosi embroidery and fashion designing. She approached Nirnaya to set up 6-month training courses for each skill. With this support she set up the centers and being a firm believer in upward mobility of skilled women, Faizunnisa appointed Shaheda, a young woman whom she had picked up from the slum, weaned her away from the job of a low paid housemaid and herself taught fashion designing. In Shaheda’s words, ‘this was something beyond my dreams….. I was living in the gutters and she not only taught me a skill but also found me fit to teach others…… I can never forget Faizunnisa or Nirnaya for creating the space and status for me……….’

Twenty women have completed the zardosi embroidery course and four among these women have turned out to be exceptional. All the twenty women are getting orders for sari and dress material embroidery and ably executing them. The twenty women, who learnt fashion-designing, find the need to fine tune their skills and are going about doing it.

Faizunnisa has simultaneously got the self-help groups she helped form, to create a track record of the mandatory six months savings required by all mainstream financial institutions. The groups opened their bank accounts. Nirnaya decided to give five groups short term revolving funds by which the women could increase capital investment and maximize profits. Trust our women, Faizunnisa said, and Nirnaya believes in trusting women with money. The women who availed of loans from the revolving fund were really able to make their money grow not only twice but even three times. This raised the enthusiasm and confidence levels so much that 500 of them attended the first international women’s day celebrations in their area in March 2004.

It has been a long journey this strong woman who, feeling she ought to put her skills and time and time to benefit others, set off to woo the Muslim slum women in Kurnool who were silently rolling ‘bidis’ day and night and being paid meager wages. She started by getting five women to come out of their homes to claim payment of accident insurance for the affected family and since then there has been no looking back for her or the community women.

Faizunnisa works with the dalit, tribal and Muslim women in the Kurnool municipality and villages. She has helped form over 200 self-help groups, helps them access regular and subsidized loans from the mainstream financial institutions, finds market linkages for these women, organizes health camps and takes up issues of exploitation of women besides addressing basic needs issues in the area.                                       More >>