In the year 2015, Ahmedabad Women’s Action Group- AWAG had obtained ‘Young Women Social Entrepreneurship Training’ from British Council, sponsored by DIAGEO. This training program was divided into two phases, I & II where 100 young women had to be trained to emerge as successful social entrepreneurs. The YWSE training was cascaded to another 100 grassroot women between the age group of 18-35 years over the course of one year.
In the year 2016, VIZTAR International, through Ministry of Textiles approached AWAG with a training proposal for sewing and stitching. The idea was to train young girls on how to stitch, sew and make finished products. Since AWAG runs an income generation center for sustainable livelihoods, where we host sewing machines and make products for our clothing brand EK AWAG, the organisation took this opportunity to create entrepreneurship possibilities for young girls.
As part of this project, we now train young girls how to stitch and make high quality end products. Many of the girls whom AWAG had trained for YWSE program appeared for the first round of this training. The same girls brought in more young women to undergo this training with AWAG. Since we had imparted YWSE training to some of these women, they understood the importance of coming and attending the stitching training at AWAG. The YWSE program had enabled them to learn a certain skill and put it into practice to obtain financial benefits.
We at AWAG, run this stitching training for a period of three months per batch. VIZTAR International has proposed to provide financial support to AWAG for another four years. With this we will be able to approach more young women and girls and convert them into entrepreneurs so that they are self employed, self dependent and self sustained. Meanwhile, over the course of one training, i.e. three months time, we try and impart glimpses of YWSE concept to these girls by conducting additional theory sessions to motivate them perform better. AWAG hopes that these simple girls coming from low socio-economic backgrounds, will convert themselves into successful seamstresse.