Gramin Mahila Vikas Sansthan

Three training centres are being run for drop out girls from schools and women in the age group 18-35 years. The idea is to solve poverty and unemployment through vocational training. One centre imparts tailoring training and two impart training in food preservation. In both the centres issues like entrepreneurship development, HIV/AIDS awareness, gender sensitisation, etc., are also addressed.

Objectives

• To develop leadership and belief among rural youth
• To ensure employment security by promoting local resources of income generation
• To bring about improvement in social status through women empowerment and economic activities
• To reduce poverty by strengthening skills
• To develop skills to move ahead in life
• To popularise income generation activities in rural community so poverty and unemployment may be eradicated
• To ensure social and economic freedom of rural communities to establish social identity
• To empower women and girls and bring about a change in their social status
• To promote self-help and self-employment
• To organise demonstrations to motivate people for making innovations in traditional skills, handicraft and agriculture, which are livelihood resources in rural areas

Activities

• Selection of trainees
• Imparting complete information of training
• Tailoring training programme. This involves imparting tailoring training to group of 15 girls and women for five months. During this period the trainees are imparted knowledge of sewing machine and its parts, cloth cutting, stitching, etc., so that the trainees are able to sew garments of children, girls and women with local flavour. Later the trainees will also be trained to sew frocks, fancy frocks, salwar-kamij, Rajput dress, ordinary lehanga, umbrella cut lehanga, kurti, kachli and fixing gota on chunnis.
• Food processing programme. This involves building capacity of trainees in paapad and mangodi making. Raw materials for making these are available locally and so is the market. Two batches of 15 girls and women each were imparted training, with each batch spread over two months.
• Entrepreneurship, HIV/AIDS awareness, gender sensitisation

Achievements

• Identification of income generation resources at local level
• Ease of learning because of better means of learning
• Economic and social improvement of women’s status
• Improvement in skills of rural women and girls
• Change in poverty and unemployment
• Increase in income
• Attainment of permanent employment at local level
• Increase in self-confidence
• Improvement in family circumstances
• Increase in income generation activities in the area

Funder

Functional Vocational Training Research Society (FVTRS), Bangalore