Saksham Tejaswini

The economic slowdown that followed the COVID-19 pandemic in India has caused unemployment rates to increase well above normal levels. This is especially true in urban areas, where the underprivileged sections of society—including daily wagers, construction workers, cab drivers, and so on—are badly affected.

With male members out of work, many urban households are seeing their savings being rapidly depleted by the crisis. This makes it important to help women—the ‘forgotten half’ of the economy—to rise up and support their families.

Empowering underprivileged women with vocational skills makes them independent. Skill training helps women take care of their families and households, and partially offsets the loss in income caused by their partners’ unemployment.

The importance of accelerating skills training to women has not got the importance it deserves, and hence has been overlooked during the present crisis. Udaan aims to put the spotlight on this issue with its programme, Saksham Tejaswini (which in English translates into ‘Empowering a woman who radiates capability and strength’). 

The Udaan Welfare Foundation has launched Saksham Tejaswini, a vocational training project for women belonging to underprivileged households.

Under the project, Udaan will appoint two instructors to teach women sewing skills over a twelve-month period, training 50 women over a period of six months each. Becoming a skilled seamstress can help a woman make much more than what she would earn through other means, like unskilled labour, selling vegetables, etc. It is a route to true economic independence for the participant (Tejaswini) and her family.

Saksham Tejaswini will be run out of Udaan’s well equipped Saksham community centre in the low-income Azadnagar neighbourhood of Thane city. The beneficiaries will comprise women in and around the vicinity of the community centre.

• Udaan proposes to conduct tailoring classes over 12 months, for a total of 100 women. The women will learn in two batches of 25 participants each of six months duration.
• We expect that after completion of the six-month training course, each participant will start earning approximately Rs. 5000 per month, which will help her to sustain her family and also help prevent under-nutrition in the family.
• Udaan has considerable expertise in teaching tailoring skills. We have been conducting weekly classes since 2016, and have invested more than 100000 student training hours for 974 women till date.