Uplifting women of lesser Gods

Empowering women is something that has been making rounds these days. Different organisations set up different standard programmes, which help women gain skill, get educated and receive support in various fields. Helping and being a helping hand to such women and organisations is COWE- Confederation of Women Entrepreneurs that conducts an Entrepreneurship Skill Development Programme- (ESDP) on different skills like tailoring, fashion designing and beautician courses.

Conducting a valedictory ceremony and certifying these women for their skills after one such programme was Aluri Lalitha, President of COWE , who shares how she managed to conduct these programme.

"We have chosen a small community hall in this basti as women will be encouraged by receiving certificates in their area and also this place Borabanda is close to places like Jublliee Hills, Banjara Hills and Hi-Tech city. This is the eighth batch that is trained here and women are very enthusiastic to learn vocational skill for their living."

After being certified with the respective course they took part in, these ladies get to work with reputed beauty parlours, fashion designers and those who learn to put mehendi work with wedding planners etc."

Collaborating with the AGM of SBI bank, COWE facilitates opportunities for the women. "They can form groups and buy sewing machines so that they can work in a textile industry, can design their merchandise in bulk, like for example petticoat making."

On asking her about the next set of training sessions, she shares, "We will start off with the next batch in another twenty days and we are also looking for sponsorship for these activities. Jayalaxmi foundation and others like SIBI, SBI and quite a few of other organisations are helping us out to empower these women."

"After training about 500 ladies in the fashion designing course we would like to take about 50 of the trained ladies and start a business in this area, as most of the women here are Muslims and they do not step out of their houses very often and also for other women who do a part time and household work, this could make it easy for them, she adds."

The main aim of COWE is to make women independent and skilled, "Instead of wasting their time in watching TV at home, these women can learn the skill they are interested in as it is free of cost, eventually can earn something for a living." COWE will soon come up with different soft skills like computer-related, communication, marketing, etc; the organisations strives to make the courses more interesting.

Talking about the response of the women, who participated in the programme, she said, "I see all of them very happy and there is a lot of change in these ladies as they have boosted up their self- confidence. Earlier they expressed their doubt about not being able to get out of their houses; we encouraged them to complete the course sitting at home." The aim is simple - to empower women with skills that will enable them to work on their own. This not makes them independent, but alsoe boosts their self confidence.