Alternative livelihoods for 500 ragpicker families

Our most important role at Tiljala SHED is to ensure that all our beneficiaries are able to claim all their entitlements (under the Government of India and the West Bengal Government.) We work hard to ensure that everyone understands their rights and can access them.  Most are illiterate and need a good deal of help with the documentation. We have a tiny team of just one paid staff member and a handful of volunteers from the community who work very hard to help families like Manjila’s…

A case study from our Rights and Entitlements team…

MANJILA

Manjila is 31 years old. She has lived in a shelter on the pavement with her husband (Asgar aged 40 years) since her marriage 11 years ago. Asgar is a daily labourer at Muslim burial ground.

Manjila has 2 sons. One is 10 years old and younger one is 5 years old. Elder son, Manirul, is studying in class VI at Adi Ballygunge School.

This family belongs from ultra poor family because her husband works as a labour and earn very less and he is an alcoholic. Her husband does not contribute for the family. Manjila is a Rag picker and she runs the family with the small amount of money. She earns to 2500-3000 p.m.

With our help Manjila now has the proper documents.  So she has achieved – SASPFUW scheme (a pension for unorganised workers), Swasthya Sathi (health insurance scheme) and the West Bengal Lakshmi Bhandar Social Security Scheme.

Now she is getting Rs500 per month from Government support in her account. With this 500, she runs her family. Manjila cannot support for private tuition fees for her son but she is giving Rs.50/p.m for the coaching fees.

Manirul  has been included for AIKYASHREE SCHEME (W.B. Pre Matric Scholarship -2022-2023), hope fully it will be sanctioned from next year.

It costs just a small amount (about Rs1000 per family) to support our team to get Manjila and her families documents in order, the first step on the way to this little family engaging with mainstream society. 

Thank you

The typical life story of a girl born into a very poor family in Kolkata would tell how she drops out of school, marries at 18 and bears several children. Living in a single room or a makeshift shelter, she worries daily how she can feed her growing family. She is functionally illiterate so when things get desperate she turns to ragpicking or becoming a maidservant.

We work with girls who want to break this narrative and this cycle of poverty. 

Raushan is 23. Her mother died when she was a child. She lives in a single room with her father, a tailor, and her brother and sister. Both siblings dropped out of school when their mother died and they are now on low wages as shop assistants. Raushan fought to stay in education and even went to college. When Tiljala SHED offered a 6 month vocational course in hair and beauty she jumped at the opportunity and has set up her own business as a beautician.  She found she had a talent for make-up and hairdressing and is also a talented henna artist. She is in great demand for weddings.

Many girls do this kind of work, but it is not well paid. So Raushan decided to expand her business: she took a Rs20,000 loan (£200) from Tiljala SHED's Livelihood Programme and bought new equipment and products and has also started training other girls.

When she first started her income was around Rs6000 per month, but now she earns at least Rs20,000. She repaid the original loan very quickly and is now in the process of applying for a second loan so that she can expand her business further. 

We are so proud of Raushan: she is a talented and determined girl who is an inspiration to other young women. We are also proud that we were able to provide her with the initial vocational skills and then the necessary investment to build her business.

Now - if she wants to - she can marry. She is financially independent.