Usha Silai Schools: Sewing Dreams, Sharing Strength
When women rise, generations rise. This holds true for women from Jammu and Kashmir, Assam and Tamil Nadu who turned their challenges into opportunities. Usha Silai Schools helped them turn survival into shared success, inspiring their daughters to dream bigger. Take a look!
From the quiet villages of Jammu & Kashmir, Kanta Devi's journey from domestic struggles to Usha Silai School teacher embodies resilience. Earning Rs. 10,000-Rs. 20,000 monthly, she not only supports her family but inspires her daughter Tanya to dream of opening a boutique together, turning hardship into shared ambition.
Tanya Sharma, Kanta Devi's daughter, shares how witnessing her mother's tireless work-balancing teaching, tailoring, and single parenthood-taught her the power of independence. "Mama, you just learned sewing; I will become a designer," Tanya says, highlighting the intergenerational spark ignited by Usha Silai School.
Priya Debnath, Lakhi Debnath's daughter, evolved from feeling sidelined during her mother's training to embracing stitching as her passion. She now designs at a Delhi fashion house. "I learned it while playing," she recalls, crediting lockdown inspirations that turned observation into her own career path.
Fabiola's 19-year-old daughter Ishanika stands tall in confidence, funding her own college education, gold and a two-wheeler through self-taught Aari embroidery and pearl work. Pursuing a B.Sc. in Fashion Technology, she and her mother work together stitching not just clothes but a future of autonomy.
NDTV in partnership with Luminous has launched an awareness campaign ‘Be A Bijli Donor’ to promote the idea of ‘save power for more power’. The idea is to conserve energy today in order to get more power tomorrow.
We inherently know that saving energy results in low energy bills, but we also need to understand that a unit of energy saved today makes it available for people still living in the dark or facing regular power cuts.
Saving power or conserving energy is about knowing the sources of energy, and areas of wastage and thereby eliminating these through technology and lifestyle changes. For instance, a 100 W (Watt) incandescent (ICL) bulb can be replaced with a 9 W LED bulb offering similar performance in terms of light output, but at far lower consumption of energy.
While a 100 W ICL bulb, used for four hours a day, consumes 146 units of energy per year, a 9 W LED bulb requires only 13.5 units per year. Clearly, switching to LED is a smart choice as it provides the same output while consuming 90 per cent less energy.
The focus of the campaign is to instill the idea of ‘save power for more power’ and in order to do so, the initiative will create awareness about energy efficient products and services, smart ways to reduce power consumption, alternate sources of energy like solar energy and the need to conserve energy. The idea is to address the rising need for energy conservation in India.
As part of the campaign, we will highlight the stories of individuals and organisations who are championing the cause of energy conservation by switching to renewable sources of energy, adopting innovations to reduce energy consumption while enjoying the same output. The initiative will provide a platform for all stakeholders to share their ideas and work towards the common goal of, ‘Save power for more power’.