Educate One Girl for One Month in Rural India

Thanks to you – and donors like you – the Kaliyachak Girls Learning Centre will be expanding its vocational and educational programs to include three additional programs in other communities in the Nalanda district in rural Bihar. 

FORRAD is currently collaborating with Samaj Kalyan Mandal, and Seva Mandal, two community based organizations in Nalanda district in Bihar, to improve agricultural productivity and profitability in the district. However, most families either work as sharecroppers or own very small land parcels, typically less than an acre, making agriculture alone insufficient for survival.

Our program expansion includes three community-based initiatives for vocational training and education for women in rural Bihar:

• one tailoring program in Hilsa,
• one tailoring program in Silao,
• one adult learning center in Saristanagar

The objective of these vocational training courses is to enable at least one member of vulnerable families to supplement household income through self-employment or employment in local companies.

Tailoring Training Programs: Silao and Hilsa Blocks in Nalanda District, Bihar

This vocational training program will run two tailoring courses in Hilsa and Silao blocks. The program in Silao is a pilot initiative to introduce tailoring to equip trainees with skills to secure employment in nearby commercial units or pursue self-employment. Hilsa tailoring course has been running successfully for the last five years as part of the Kaliyachak Girls’ Learning Centre. 

Both tailoring courses will run for two hours daily for six months taught by local instructors from the area. At the end of twelve months, our program goal is that 24 young women at Silao and 40 young women at Hilsa will be equipped with skills that enable them to find work locally, significantly improving their earning potential.

For the center in Silao block, an additional goal will be for at least half the women to find regular paid employment in nearby tailoring businesses. These small businesses have already been approached and the employers have expressed their willingness to hire and further train successful graduates of he Silao tailoring courses. Our goal at the end of this pilot is to have established a successful and sustainable training center in Silao.

The center in Hilsa block will run as a place for young women to acquire tailoring skills to enable them to sew for themselves and their families, and earn a supplementary income by sewing for others within their village in an informal way. These trainees will also be encouraged to seek opportunities outside of their village when possible.

Adult Learning Centre for Women in Saristanagar

FORRAD and its community-based partner Samaj Kalyan Mandal, have been running the Kaliyachak Girls’ Learning Centre the village of Kaliyachak for the past 9 years. This Centre helps girls to achieve learning levels commensurate with their age. 

However, the Centre has been unable to provide adult education to a section of women in the neighbouring hamlet of Saristanagar. These women are hesitant, because of their age and social standing, to come to the Learning Centre in Kaliyachak.

These women and girls belong to the most marginalised communities. They have no landholdings, no regular, reliable source of income, very few go to school, fewer still complete higher education. Most of the young women marry before the legal age of 18 years and have large families of 5 children or more. While FORRAD has tried to engage the people of Saristanagar in all the community work that it does in the area, the participation of these women is limited and diffident. 

FORRAD believes it is essential to engage exclusively with the women in this hamlet in order to listen and understand their needs more closely, and then perhaps be able to be catalysts for more lasting change. This new Adult Learning Centre in Saristanagar will be a starting point where women can gather to acquire basic literacy and numeracy skills, and FORRAD can learn how to support the community more meaningfully. 

The most experienced teacher, Tarawati, from the Learning Centre will spend an hour and a half at Saristanagar 6 days a week working with interested girls and women, teaching basic literacy and numeracy skills. In doing so, she will also try and persuade the younger girls to attend the Learning Centre at Kaliyachak and the government school. In addition to functional literacy, there will also be introductory sessions (conversations) on health, hygiene and nutrition, human rights, civil rights and women’s rights.  

At present, there are 20 interested women and girls. We will see how it progresses. A desirable outcome from being equipped with functional literacy is that some of the girls participating may continue their education. With improved skills the women participating may be given greater responsibility at their workplaces. FORRAD aims for the daily sessions to become a forum where the women can air their grievances, be heard and collectively, find solutions. 

How Will Your Contribution Have an Impact?

For the women and girls of Nalanda district, this program represents a genuine turning point. When a young woman gains an income, there is a shift in how she is seen — and how she sees herself — within her family and community. For the women of Saristanagar, the program offers an opportunity to learn to read and write, and to learn what else might be possible. Basic literacy opens doors to healthcare, to understanding their rights and government benefits, and to ensuring that their own daughters go to school. When women earn and girls learn, families are healtheir, children are better nourished, and the next generation has a different future. We can interrupt a cycle of poverty and exclusion for these women and girls.

To learn more about these new programs, please download the program proposal and budget.  And please consider making an additional contribution this month to support this program expansion. 

Thank you for your support!

Links:

• FORRAD

• Vocational Training & Adult Education Programs (PDF)