Empowerment of “less-fortunate” women in rural Bangladesh by Sewing and making traditional handicrafts
Ankur’s aim is to make the deprived rural women self dependent! We worked in Nilphamari district extensively and found this project very useful in women empowerment. We are starting a pilot project in a remote village in Jhenaidah to empower these women. We plan is to spread the same concept in many remote villages in Jhenaidah and Jashore!We also can apply the same concept in many villages in other districts of Bangladesh.
Our concept in Jhenaidah’s villages consists of 3 parallel efforts to make the project self sustaining in the long run:
1. We’ll provide sewing machines to some of those women who know how to sew but can’t effort a sewing machine. They will teach how to sew to few more women. All sewing machines will be owned by Ankur . If we have 3 sewing machines, those can be shared by 6 women. They can create cushion-covers, bed-cover, panjabi etc. where some women can do Nakshi-katha stitch and other design to sell in a handicraft store.
2. We’ll find some skilled Nakshi-katha artists , Jashore stitch and kurshi-kata artists to create varieties of handicrafts. Jhenaidah/Jashore are famous for these artists who can make traditional handicrafts and cloths using their sewing skills.
3. We’ll create an online handicrafts store to sell the traditional handicrafts and clothes made by this women empowerment project. Our goal is to establish this project in 64 districts in Bangladesh.
Please contact Fahmida Khatun "[email protected]", Kanij Fatema "[email protected]" or Shaestagir Chowdhury "[email protected]" for more details.