Train 100 poor Mumbai women in entrepreneurship

Freedom For You is very fortunate to have been selected by GlobalGiving UK under its Field Evaluation Programme, wherein GGUK sends its experts to the selected Non-profit for an on-the-ground assessment. Despite doing a high quality vetting of its non-profit profits which gives donors the confidence to give to smaller, unknown organizations that do great work, GGUK has made its evaluation process even more robust by sending field evaluation volunteers to conduct evaluations in person. These assessments provide many benefits for both the project partners and GGUK. Besides fostering closer relationships, it ensures a strong assessment of project's transparency and effectiveness on various aspects including project impact, organizational effectiveness, financial transparency, and accountability.

Mr Charles and Ms Elizabeth visited our non-profit between Aug15 and Aug 20, 2016 and conducted the Field Evaluation Programme for GGUK. This programme will add immense value to Freedom For You in the days to come, in all its future projects and also in the qualitative aspects of management of the non-profit.

Freedom For You has been training marginalized women in slums in Navi Mumbai in Basic and Advanced tailoring skills. On the Indian Independence Day, August 15, 2016, Freedom For You inaugurated its second Skill Development Center at Sai Baba Nagar Slums in Rabale, Navi Mumbai, by the hands of Ms Elizabeth, and in the presence of Mr Charles, Trustees, volunteers, general public, and most importantly the potential marginalized women who would be the trainees at this second Skill Development Center.

At present, about 15 women are undergoing training in basic tailoring in this center and many more are expected to join soon after the end of the current Monsoon season. All these women will be trained for over 3 months and are expected to excel by becoming dress designer and/or bag designers. Freedom For You hope that with your continued support, we will be able to start a couple of more Skill Development Centres in the coming quarter elsewhere in Navi Mumbai to increase our positive impact.

Meanwhile, women from the first Skill Development Centre are already making children’s dress, petticoats, and jute bags, seen in the enclosed photos. A few well-wishers of our non-profit are already talking to us for placing orders for designer jute bags and these orders will help the marginalized women become economically independent and thrive.

Finally, we are pleased to let you know that Freedom For You has achieved "SUPESTAR" in GlobalGiving’s Reward Status. This further strengthens our image with its Donors - YOU All :). Without you, Freedom For You would not have been able to take up this very important project to empower marginalized women into business entrepreneurs. We are very proud as SUPERSTAR status is the highest of the GGUK Reward status that a non-profit partner can achieve. Freedom For You has also qualified for Charity Aid Foundation, USA for receiving donations from US individuals who can now make a 100% tax efficient donation.

Freedom For You is grateful for your continued generous support at all times!

Thanks to your generous donations to our project "Train 100 poor Mumbai women in entrepreneurship" during the International Crowd Funding Winter Challenge 2015 and thereafter during the recently concluded 'Global Giving Bonus Day' and the 'Monthly Donation Matching' offer,  we could give a few poor women a new direction in their life.

One such beneficiary, at our Digha-Ramnagar Centre, is Ms Bina*, who moved to Mumbai from State of Haryana with her husband and two sons. Rina, 25, is unlettered, can only count up to 30 and earns Rs 3,000 per month (GBP30) as a safai karmachari (garbage collector from housing soieties).  Her Husband and her younger brother are also in the same occupation since this is the only job available without much competition for the illiterates, and also because her brethren from local population would not like to take up such de-meaning jobs;

Now, a regular at the basic tailoring class, Bina’s income-generating horizons have widened and given her different work options for the future. She is pretty fast in learning tailoring skills too, compared to her colleagues and has swiftly advanced to higher levels in tailoring; now she is eagerly learning basics of women dress making, while a few of them are still learning blouse making, trying to catch up with Rina.

While learning tailoring, all of them have made baby caps, blouses, dress for small girls, and will advance to higher levels by learning to make nighties, ladies home-wear tops, home-linen, ladies dress making  etc. Overall developments are satisfactory and our resource person has informed us that in next 2 months time most of these women would be ready for making jute bags and women dresses of marketable quality which is our main objective  to help them become a successful women entrepreneur.. We have found that the inital estimate of one month training in making these women ready for jute bag/ladies dress making is grossly off the mark, and a minimum of 3 to 4 months are required given their background, the current season of disrupting monsoon, trending floating population (who move to their home-towns in north India during summer holidays for working in their agricultural fields and return after sowing the seeds end of July every year, post arrival of rains). Attendance is usually  thin during the start of monsoons.

To speed up the process of reaching the target numbers, without sacrifying on the quality of training, Freedom4U Board has decided to increase the training centres by adding one in July 2016 and another by end August 2016 by hiring some space on rental basis, in the urban slums of Navi Mumbai. Negotiations are on with a few owners of rental space in these slums.

Freedom4U have reached over 90% target funding goal: collected  GBP3488 (USD 5164) out of the target of GBP 3803  (USD5750), leaving aside only GBP 315 to be funded as on date. This is quite an achievement , thanks onceagain to the confidence reposed by you in our capabilities.

Meanwhile, to utilize our rental premises in the best way, Freedom4U have started free computer education to girl children (over 7 years) and women on week days between 5 & 7 pm, and free english speaking classes on week ends at the same time. More than 21 girl children and 2 women (one is married) have enrolled for the same. They have completed the basic computer knowledge course in using PCs, MS Windows, Word, Paint, PPT etc Now we shall be teaching Excel, usage of Internet, opening an email account, sending email, use of Tabs, Smart Phones etc. Response for these courses have been tremendous and we shall be announcing the second batch enrollment soon.

Freedom4U strongly believe in the Digital India Mission program of our Prime Minister and to make  this Mission a success, everyone including  Non-profits should attempt advancing computer literacy at the bottom-of-the-pyramid first. More so, these are the people who are not exposed to hi-tech gadgets like PCs, laptops, smart phones, internet etc. let alone use these gadgets in their daily lives. We have now  started enrolling boys upto the age of 14 for free computer education in this skill center. We are launching Basic Beautician Course soon, resource team and course curriculum have been finalized. We have enrolled about 8 women till date and shall be enrolling more women and girl children over 16 years, so that the course can be started soon with 15 participants.

Last month Freedom4U have helped install Pure, Clean & Safe Drinking Water using UF/UV technology in two slum based schools benefitting over 3700 children in Digha/Airoli nodes of Navi Mumbai.

We are happy to inform you that our Non-profit was awarded “PLATINUM” rating for year 2015-16, by GuideStar India, a third party professional organization and a unit of GuideStar USA, for highest level of Transparency, Public Accountability and compliance of applicable statutory laws of the country. We had also received this highest rating for the year 2014-15 too. Now this annual due diligence process has just been initiated by GuideStar India for the current year ending March 31, 2016 and we at Freedom4U are hopeful that this year too we would be awarded "PLATINUM SEAL" that would be valid until Dec 2017.

In addition, we are happy to inform you that we were declared Champion Level Winner for  GuideStar India Platinum-2016, by GuideStar India, and only 7 non profits have achieved this Champion Level accreditation. Our Non-profit name, listed at serial no 4 can be seen in this  link : http://www.guidestarindia.org/NGOTransparencyAwards.aspx#'LeaderBoard' 

Such recognitions from leading institutions only re-imposes our faith in our focus on the developmental sector which can result in community enrichment and societal development.

We look forward to your continued support and cooperation in the days to come and we shall keep you posted with regular updates on our project and the CAUSE "Train 100 poor Mumbai women in entrepreneurship" which is close to your heart.

With warm regards

Ravi S Kumar

CEO & Managing Trustee

* (PS: Beneficiaries names have been changed to protect their identities)

Links:

• Champion Level GuideStar India PLATINUM - see serial no 4 below