By Lizzie Guinness | Programme Manager
Ayesha is 24 years old, and has been involved in our project for one year. As a result of our intervention, she has started to earn a living by selling blouses and other clothes she has produced.
Ayesha is from a Pardhi tribal community living on the outskirts of Amravati. Pardhis suffer from severe discrimination as the community has the unfortunate reputation of being criminal by birth it's extremely difficult for them to integrate into mainstream society. For Ayesha and her friends it has been a unique experience that the project team invited them into their house. They are normally never invited by non-Pardhi people or engage with people outside of their community.
This has built confidence and a feeling of acceptance in the group of Pardhi women. Ayesha has changed a lot in the one year of participating in the training. Her family income comes from the traditional caste-based work of producing alcohol and from begging. More and more Ayesha has expressed that she doesn't want to continue with this. She is eager to earn a living which is not humiliating and harming. Being a clever young woman she learnt sewing clothes very quickly. Now Ayesha has started to take dress-making orders which increases her income. She has even initiated the same training in her community. She has learnt so swiftly that she can now even pass her knowledge on. With the help of the project, she builds herself up as a teacher for other women. Now there is one sewing class run by her in her community location supported by the project.
Ayesha is better educated than most of her community. She has finished 12 years of schooling which is unusual. This helps her to set up a small business on her own and also to teach other women. She is very keen to expand more and more so that her family no longer needs to pursue humiliating ways of income generation.
She is a role model for other women and encourages them to participate in the course. And of course she is also encouraging education for girls in the community.
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