Salungan is a very remotely placed village in Bhor taluk. Girls here get the schooling up to 7th Std, and to get further education from 8th Std they need to travel out of their village to some other village. Very few girls are able to pursue the education further. Remaining girls remain at home doing farming work, and day to day kitchen work. Their parents start searching for the groom within 2 to3 years. The girls get married off. They are not exposed to any skills. They go to their husband’s place and do the same work, farming and kitchen. Soon they deliver of 2 to 3 babies get tubectomy done and their life continues.
So the Trust thought of giving some skill education to the girls and women as well. Trustee Dr. Medha Paranjpe searched for the resources and she came out with a plan.
We had meeting with girls in August 2018. 11 girls attended and decided to start project from the coming Wednesday.Initially Meghana Madam decided to teach them with the handwork only. She started with straight lines, nice neat stitching means what?, etc. Mean while we decide to acquire one stitching machine or a donor for the machine. So that we can teach them to stitch on machine. Trustee Mrs. Vishakha Velankar donated the brand new stitching machine. And the project started picking up. The stitching on machine was faster stronger and geometrically correct. But it took again 3 – 4 visits to change over to machine and get the fine stitching.
The girls started taking interest but to our great surprise only 4 girls turn to the project and remaining girls did not come at all.
Meghana Madam came every Wednesday with us to Salungan. She taught them to stitch small purses, bags, bags with compartments, jute bags and how to fit zip, etc.
She designed 6 ft x 9 ft and 7 ft x 11 ft large DAREES. She taught them the patchwork and some hand embroidery.
This material and final products were displayed during the yearly get together( Saptaha) at their own villages Kondgao and Salungan. The girls were very enthusiastic. They had prepared small CHUNCHI ( a small local purse used by women) to attract the locals.
It was for the first time such stall was organized but to their surprise the locals did take interest but did not buy a single product. So the girls got very much disappointed.
Then the trust decided to have the display of these products in Pune. Such 2 displays were organised in Pune during small functions. And during these displays all the articles got sold out.
The money such collected was distributed among the girls. The Monsoon 2019 started so the project is kept on hold for this season and will restart after the monsoon.
