From Bihar To Nepal: Sangeeta's Journey Of Struggles

Lalitpur, Nepal: Living in a joint family of eight members in a village of Lalitpur district located in the Lumbini Zone of Nepal is Sangeeta Dhawan, a woman who has pieced together her life with help from Usha Silai School. Finding it difficult to make ends meet in India, Sangeeta and her family moved to Nepal in search of a better life. Yet, their troubles didn't cease with the migration. Unending financial woes resulted in all their hopes being dependent on selling the produce of their farm. However, their 10 kattha (0.333 hectare) of land was insufficient to feed everyone in her family, let alone be a source of income. By now, Sangeeta had become more eager to brush up on her forgotten skill of sewing and make a livelihood out of that.

"My father-in-law came home after about five years of work in Malaysia as a laborer" she said when asked about what prompted her to enroll herself for the sewing school. "He always inspired us to work with the skills in hand. With his earning he enrolled me in the Usha Silai School to learn tailoring."

Once she started her 7-day training at the Usha Silai School, she began learning different styles of stitching and soon became a master at tailoring women's garments.

CARE Nepal, an organisation aimed at empowering the poor, vulnerable and socially excluded people so as to fulfill their basic needs and help them achieve social justice in Nepal, seeing Sangeeta's determination to work, offered her assistance to start her own sewing school.

With the monetary help she received she purchased an interlock machine and got repair work done in her house to start holding sewing classes there. She says with pride and with a sense of gratitude to her in-laws who have supported her throughout the journey,

I am the first woman in my family who has been able to start a business by sewing. I have trained over ten women till now. After they got married, they, too, have received support from their family which has helped them become tailors.

Usha Silai School, a programme that has changed the lives of many underprivileged women in India and beyond. It has helped women like Sangeeta who have been looking for opportunities to sustain themselves.

Despite knowing stitching, I never earned from it until I took the formal training. Now, I have been in this profession for 3-4 years and can do more than the nine techniques that I was taught during training period. Sometimes, when I see different kinds of stitching designs on television, I make a mental note of it and try re-creating those."

Today, Sangeeta is well versed in stitching skirts, shirts, pants, school uniforms, bags and so on. As her earning stabilised and increased, she managed to pay off her loans as well. Sangeeta is not just proud of her career growth, she is also happy for those women whom she has managed to help by training them. "Out of all the women I have taught, 2-3 women have started their own sewing schools" she said.

To her, stitching has given her those opportunities that she had only hoped for earlier. "I would feel sad when my husband would refuse to give me money. Now that I have my own income, I no longer need to ask for it or explain why I spend it."
 

 
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