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A story of Local Response by Rekha Kuruvilla
Sarnet started this centre to give skills to women. She began to teach Arabic to mothers. This inspired a lot of women in the community. Thanks to the inspiration given by Sarnet, women are regularly attending classes to learn many new skills.
The community is confident that Sarnet is an asset to them. Sarnet has not stopped, but continues to help the community.
What she gained skills from the community, she transferred those same skills to others in the community. She is still empowering people to empower herself.
When we gain skills, we can use those skills for our benefit. But we can also transfer them to others so that they can benefit. And thus can we empower others.
After 2 years, she got married and she moved to another town. By then she had become more self-confident. She contacted the local volunteers' group to help her to establish a centre for improving the skills of women. Sarnet was able to obtain help from the local volunteers.
Sarnet was 16 years old and came from a conservative Muslim community. She had the talent to empower herself and to empower others, but she was not encouraged to pursue either studies or skills. She lived in a slum area and there were a lot of NGOs which gave interventions on health, education and vocational skills.
Sarnet was encouraged by the local volunteers to attend these awareness and skills building classes. Sarnet attended these classes and she became interested in teaching these skills to other women in the community in order to make them economically independent.
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