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.
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