Guiding light for women's empowerment

Sthree Deepa is just seven years old, but its achievements are far better than decades old organisations. The women and children development organisation could achieve so much at such short notice by going out of the way to help women.

Sthree Deepa president Noor Fathima said now the organisation had 530 self help groups in Mysore city and 150 SHGs in rural areas, with their members in constant touch. She said so far over 5,000 women have been trained and the savings of the SHGs itself ran into Rs 2 crore.

Secretary A V Vidya said Sthree Deepa believed in follow-up after training and strived for real empowerment by way of placement with companies or helping women to become self-employed.

She said the SHGs formed by the organisation had availed loans from banks to the tune of Rs 1.6 crore. Some single SHGs itself had availed loans up to Rs 5 lakh. “The highlight of our SHGs is that they repay loans before the stipulated term and get ready to apply for fresh loans. They all have become enterprising, which gives us confidence and inspiration,” Vidya added.

Training programmes

Noor Fathima said training programmes depended on market demands and changed from time to time. “Now we are training women in tailoring, embroidery and garment production and basic computers,” she said.

Vidya said we also conduct personality development courses and it includes working knowledge in English language. “Computer knowledge coupled with English skills has landed some 50 of our members in jobs in malls that have recently come up in Mysore,” she said.

“Among 1,200 trained in garment production, at least 600 women have landed in decent jobs in industries,” Noor Fathima pointed out.

Tracing how Sthree Deepa happened, she said herself and Vidya were active in forming SHGs and helping economically backward women become financially independent by saving small amounts of money and availing loans to start vocations in 2003 and 2004.

The field work helped them understand the difficulties of women and SHGs. Out of such experiences, they formed Sthree Deepa on March 15, 2005, a platform to overcome some hurdles coming in the way of helping women. Then they joined a political party and made S A Ramdas the honorary president, who provided moral support.

Vidya said unlike government programmes which reaches only a few sections of the society due to some conditions and rules, Sthree Deepa caters to a wider spectrum of the society.

“Sthree Deepa does not restrict its programmes on the basis of age or educational qualification. The only thing we see is whether the woman is interested in the training and whether she is willing to use the skills thus obtained to become financially independent,” she said.

“We have tried out hands at coir products and candles. We stopped some of them as the returns for women was less. Our members have even marketed their products in door-to-door campaigns. The experiences were unique. We have tried what one would not even think of in the wildest of dreams. We have made illiterate women from slums manufacture electric chokes for tubelights,” Fathima said.

“In view of domestic problems faced by several women, we started a counselling centre and have been handling many cases successfully. We discourage divorces in the interest of children. But try to bring in harmony among couples with several sessions of counselling,” Vidya said.

She said the fruits of all the efforts she and her team puts in is the confident smile on the faces of the women guided by the organisation. “Such successful women give us motivation and inspiration to do more good work,” she adds.