Empowerment Centres

Empowerment Centres are the core projects of Sambhali Trust. We established these centres to provide underprivileged women from deprived areas of Jodhpur an opportunity to have a good primary education and vocational skill training in sewing and embroidery.

Rajasthan is a patriarchal society with women and girls treated as second-class citizens, often deemed unworthy of an education due to poverty, family, and cultural reasons. Teenage girls who may not have been to school or needed to drop out because of their family circumstances and responsibilities find that they can meet with other girls in the same situation. They can freely discuss their feelings (which they may not be allowed to do at home) and support each other as a group.

At our ten empowerment centres, we provide:

• Tuition in English, Maths, and Hindi and make sure all students are literate.

• Vocational training in sewing and embroidery to learn how to make various Indian garments, accessories, and soft toys.

• Provision of a core-set of 10 educational workshops from Women’s Health and Hygiene to Indian Politics and Geography along with Women’s Rights and many more that volunteers have an interest or expertise in (eg: photography, drama, specific medical knowledge)

• Encourage self-esteem and improving confidence and self-expression and provide self-defense training.

• Skills to enable them to earn an income through sewing in their local community and give them access to a larger market through Sambhali Boutique.

 Self-Help (Microfinance)

This project was established in October 2009 to help these women, by providing them with a means of saving money and having access to loans, thus enabling them to create small enterprises of their own and work towards financial independence. Women are given financial and business management training.

Currently the programme includes around 85% Dalit women, many of whom are widows, whose husbands have died working in the stone quarries, a common but dangerous occupation in the area.

This self-help project is a leading example of the power of microfinance in India. This process of extending small loans to individual borrowers who have traditionally lacked access to credit, has become one of the most popular anti-poverty strategies throughout the world and has proved effective in empowering communities and is easy to set up and sustain.

There are 10 groups in Setrawa and 3 groups in Jodhpur.