Project Description
WHAT DOES THE FOUNDATION DO?
- Dress Designing & Tailoring (DDT) project was launched on a pilot basis in 2 schools that were government aided and provided free education to students
- The schools provided a well-lit room & the Foundation contributed through classroom furniture, sewing machines, cloth materials, tailoring essentials, course design & trainers
- The 2-year voluntary course is open to all girls in grades 8th to 12th, where they learn the skills of cutting, sewing, stitching & embroidery
- Currently, Dress Design is done manually through drawings. However, Computer-based design course is being introduced shortly
- On initiating DDT course, the Foundation witnessed that the participating girls had started earning out of their newly learnt tailoring skills and were even buying sewing machines out of their earned savings for the sake of better livelihoods
- Encouraged by these developments, the Foundation sensed that this initiative had the innate potential of making underprivileged girls & women self-employable
- The Foundation therefore expanded its services by offering Summer Vocational Courses to all women, school teachers & recent graduates, duly awarding them with certificates on course completion
- After analyzing the positive results of the pilot DDT project, now the training is being extended to all the partner schools.
HOW IT STARTED?
As Manutai Kanya School was renovated and functional, the next step was to provide better career options to these girls. As the girls came from extremely poor families of ragpickers, cleaners and manual scavengers, their choice of school and career options was limited. The girls continued with their parents’ profession and the cycle of poverty continued.
To ensure that girls had a fair chance of living better lives, the Foundation initiated a Dress Designing & Tailoring course in the school with voluntary participation from the girl students. The response was enthusiastic, and the course is now being introduced in other partner schools.
GALLERY
