COVID Relief for Tamil Nadu Families

Basic Tailoring and Garment Making Technique are one of the basic and foremost needs to develop the sustainable rural, even the urban livelihood among the people. We have basic demands about the apparel in every household despite the cast, creed, and religion. So, the trade Tailoring and Garment Making have an aspect among the rural women folk to help their families and maintain their minimal livelihood through these trades. We had provided a training module helps the trainees in making apparel techniques and marketing of value and developed capabilities of young entrepreneurs in establishing a rural business based cortege industries.

A group of women in the village of Manikapuram, Tiruchirapalli had lost their wage employment in the garment designing business. Hence, they were not able to meet their family expenses to run their family.

VOICE Trust has provided them with two cloth stitching machines to initiate their own business, which was more helpful for them to get sustain income for their family. And now, they are expanding their business to the nearby city.

Pandemic has been brutal in destroying the world order as we knew it. It had particularly brought the lives of the marginalized sections to a crashing halt. As more and more small and marginal farmers are pushed into the informal sector workforce, women are in a particularly difficult space given the gender wage gap that exists in India. Pappa's case was no different. 

"The rains had destroyed my crops and I was out of cash to buy even the bare necessities for the house. My husband and I couldn't even find work in the Trichy city as laborers at construction sites due to COVID", says Pappa staring into vacant space as she sits beside her husband Raman recollecting the difficult times. Tiruchirappalli, a tier II city of India has considerable small and marginal farmers in the periurban space and post-pandemic economic recovery has been slow owing to climate change-induced torrential rains.  " VOICE Trust believed in us and helped me out by giving me money to buy groceries and a pair of chicken and rooster. This was a lifesaver for us/" she says heaving a sigh of relief. 

Backyard poultry farming is one of the easiest and low-cost methods that are taught to beneficiaries by the Voice Trust team to ensure that they get basic income and assured nutrition. Mustering all her courage Pappa had started out with the monetary assistance received. Now she sits at her verandah surrounded by 27 little hatchlings peeping around her and dreams of starting a poultry business using country chicken in the future. She is a stranger to the modern fancy world of entrepreneurship. But she says, " I want to learn more about country chickens, bank accounts,  and I know VOICE Trust will help me with the knowledge". And that's how we knew she had decided to embrace the path of entrepreneurship and we couldn't be happier.  

Covid-19 has caused significant distress around the globe. Apart from the evident physical symptoms in infected cases, it has caused serious damage to public mental health. India, like other countries, implemented a nationwide lockdown to contain and curb the transmission of the virus. The current research is an attempt to explore psychological distress among people residing in India during the lockdown. Most of the women were asked to complete a questionnaire with questions around symptoms of depression, anxiety, stress, and family affluence. The results indicated that people who do not have enough supplies to sustain the lockdown were most affected, and family affluence was found to be negatively correlated with stress, anxiety, and depression. And this is the time to relieve from the stress and grab the resources & opportunities to make it money to become self-sustain.

Our VOICE Trust organized a small event on the day of “International Rural Women’s Day on October 15th,2021” in the village of Maniyankurichi, Tiruchirapalli, Tamil Nadu, India, where around 100+ women actively participated. To make them stress-free, we have organized different fun activities, competitions, and traditional dance programs & motivating them by distributing prizes. And also, we had made an open discussion platform for the women community to have a brainstorming session on “Converting available resources & opportunities to business”.

As the result of a brainstorming session, we have got an idea of re-building a self-sustain village by establishing a traditional business (Small scale) of Cloth Washing, Mud Jewellery Design, House construction, Painting, Cloth weaving, Farming, Saloon, Carpentry, potteries, hairdressing, etc. through a modern system of SHG groups. And Our VOICE Trust is going to keep provide technical support to those women to establishing a small traditional business in their same village by effectively using the resources, Govt schemes, and opportunities to make them & their surroundings become self-sustained.

In fact, it is giving money away!  VOICE Trust began distributing its first round of cash grants to struggling victims of the COVID lockdown by providing a small stipend to 20 female heads of households.  Although the laws governing donations received from outside of India, as GlobalGiving's are, meant we could only give these women 1000 rupees at a time, we were, frankly, stunned (and of course gratified) by how excited and thankful the women were to receive this help.

One of these women is Indrarani, a recently widowed mother of a 1 1/2-year-old daughter. When Indrarani lost her job due to the recent COVID lockdown in Tamil Nadu, the two of them moved in with  Indrarani's mother.  Although she is eager to work, there are no jobs available in the area.  So she now has no job, no money, and two lives depending on her. When we gave her the stipend, she was overcome emotionally, since it meant she could buy medicine for her mother and fresh vegetables for her daughter.

We will be giving these same women another 1000 rupees next week.  As a result of the outpouring of support we received in response to the current crisis, VOICE Trust can continue to provide Indrarani and the others with the help they need.  Each of their needs is different, but all of them find dignity and joy in being able to spend the money as they see fit.

Thank you for your support!

Meet John, one of the farmers your donations helped to produce his own fertilizer from worms.

John’s five-acre farm in Magilambadi, Tamil Nadu, has been in his family for generations.  But his father always had to work as a teacher to supplement the farm income.

After his father’s death, John gave up his career in Mechanical Engineering to devote himself to turning the farm into a self-supporting enterprise.   Because of his passionate commitment to sustainable organic farming, customers would drive hours to buy his vegetables.

Like farmers throughout the region, John was hit hard by India’s lockdown last March, which dried up his markets.  Because he banks his own seeds, he was ready for the next planting, but he still needed to buy fertilizer, whose price has soared during the pandemic.  With the training, supplies, and equipment VOICE Trust provided, he was quickly able to create a rich vermicompost that produced an even healthier and more plentiful crop than the previous season.  

Every farmer’s situation is different, and each requires a unique solution.  A donation to support continuing COVID Recovery for Tamil Farmers will allow them to buy whatever they need most to make their farm thrive.