Dear Friends
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I am writing a long overdue update on the activities of Kusala Projects. In November-December 2008, some members of Kusala Projects visited Bodhgaya. We were able to meet up with the children sponsored via Kusala Projects and we had the opportunity to take some of them on excursions to Varanasi & Rajgir.
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In January we enrolled the children at a new school, Sant Moggallana Public School, adjacent to the Eighty Foot Buddha in Bodhgaya. ‘Sant’ is similar in meaning to ’saint’ and ‘Moggallana’ was one of Buddha’s two chief disciples. The children are happy at STMG & are doing well in their studies. STMG is an English medium school, meaning that as the children progress through their grades, subjects are increasingly taught in both Hindi & English. Being able to speak English is a great advantage in India to further educational and career opportunities. Next time we visit Bodhgaya, we look forward to being able to converse with the children in English.
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We also met the teachers and students at Kusala Sewing Centre. It is obvious that these young women are very happy to be given the chance to learn new skills. For most of them, their education had finished at school in grades five or six. At the end of June, the centre will be concluding its third six month teaching term. This term there have been forty five students learning sewing, embroidery and cloth painting. In total we have trained 150 young women in these skills.
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The constitution of Kusala Projects Inc includes these two objectives:
- ‘Establishment of self help groups for individuals to develop their own businesses, with particular focus on women’.
- ‘To raise the self-esteem and self-reliance of the communities involved’.
With these objectives in mind, Kusala Projects is keen to help sewing centre graduates take the next step and earn a livelihood from their training. Whilst visiting Bodhgaya, Kusala Projects offered sewing centre graduates the opportunity to obtain personal sewing machines via interest free ‘micro loans’. The purpose here was to give them the means to generate income with their sewing skills. Initially, some of the young women agreed to accept this offer, but backed out at the last moment. The reason given was that they did not feel confident that they could repay the loans. Kusala Projects was disappointed with this outcome. However, we do realize that the concept of ‘micro loans’ has not been implemented in Bodhgaya before, and also, our graduates are quite young, being just seventeen or eighteen years of age.
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We are in the process of trying another initiative to help our graduates earn income: this is for them to make lightweight travelling hammocks which would be marketed in Australia and also online. All profits would be returned to the young women. We have sent a prototype hammock to Bodhgaya. The sewing teacher there will oversee the making of a sample batch of hammocks which we will then sell at Australian backpacker hostels and retail outlets. There will be tags on the hammocks stating thay young women in Bodhgaya will be the beneficiaries of all profits.
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Kusala Sewing Centre’s present teaching term concludes at the end of June. The next term begins in July and one of the activities will be hammock making. We also hope to run courses in embroidery & cloth painting, but more funds are required. If you are able to help with this, it will be immensely beneficial for the lives of these young women.
Yours in Dharma,
Chittapala.
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Filed under: Sewing Centre by chittapala
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