Project Swawlamban, a capacity building drive witnessed the unexpected growth of our first cohort. The confidence, poise and entrepreneurship shown by the women participants were unmatched. The zeal to learn and grow was expanding with each passing day as many of our participants had opened ways for their second earning and learning.
a. The high point of the workshop was digital literacy class when our cohort was introduce to audio search and Translate features on Google. Record and send feature of the WhatsApp open vistas of communication beyond their imagination. Hesitation and barrier of not knowing English language was broken and gave wings to their confidence.
b. Basic English classes provided the much required conversational skills which helped them to communicate better with students and staff on campus. It made them feel visible.
c. Finding easy and safe ways to save and compound their earnings added to the esteem of our women who were dependent on their male family members to manage their finance.
d. Knowledge of Govt. Schemes like Atal Pension Yojna, Atal Bima and Ayushman Cards empowered them beyond their imagination.
e. Skill building drive initiated by entrepreneurship workshop help them discover their hidden talents or we should say that talents which were cashable with minimum efforts. We saw emergence of new avatars of our participants where someone was crocheting her way to financial freedom to selling ghee to earn extra.
f. Sustainability through craft workshop led by Designer Jharna Joshi equipped these women with skills which helped them to convert waste cloth materials into high selling craft items. Many created stationary items, hand bags and decorative pieces for sale in our finale exhibition which was sold out on day one.
g. The confidence and team building exercises has sparked to zeal to continuous learning as two of our participants have enrolled to computer classes for their upskilling and promotion in their professional roles at university.
As the training progressed and we developed insights into their day to day struggles, we evolved our training material, content was customized to suit the requirements. Find Your True North came out much stronger ,aware and transformed from the program. This program was not beneficial and transformational to the participants only but to the organizers equally.