Barsha Parida, a nineteen year old girl, a resident of Ogalpada village of Janla Panchayat stays in a thatched house with her parents and a younger brother. Her father is a daily wage labour, but he doesn’t get works regularly. Her mother works as a Pachika (Cook) at Anganwadi Centre in Janla. She is the only breadwinner for the family and earns INR 3,200/- a month from W&CD development.
The family was in extreme poverty because it was not even possible to meet the basic needs with INR 3200/-. They were used to spend some nights without having food due to lack of money. Barsha, after completing her higher secondary education dropped her studies because the family was unable to pay for her graduation and meet her educational expenses. Her younger brother was still in school. The situation became grimmer, when they were not able to pay the tuition fees of her brother which was very reasonable taking into account of the school that was he was studying.
That was a moment when the family feared of the situation they were going through and just wanted to escape. A small kid was getting deprived from education because of poverty was no less than a big and violent joke to them. During such trying times, people drive out the never noticed best abilities out of them. Poverty is a call to action, a call to change the situation so that one get enough to eat, adequate shelter and an access to health and education. Barsha, then decided to work and earn. From one of her friends in village, she came to know the Skill Development Training Centre (SDTC) set up at Ogalpada by Mahashakti Foundation with the support of Indian Oil Corporation Ltd. (IOCL) & Skill Development Institute, Bhubaneswar.
She joined the centre in March 2020. She was completely new to stitching & sewing. The trainer gave a lot of attention in explaining her the basics, which she caught instantly. Then, she was taught about different types of dresses, graphs of dresses, cloth cutting and stitching. She was then trained on developing different patterns and folds and performing seamless dress alterations. By the end of six months, she was able to stitch women top, kurtis, pajamas, salwar-kameezes and even nighties.
To make tailoring as her profession, Barsha took a loan amount of INR 5000/- from Sampark Fin Services Pvt. Ltd. (A group company of Mahashakti Foundation) in December 2019 and purchased a sewing machine. Although, she was selected as a cutting helper in Aditya Birla Fashion Retail Ltd., Mancheswar, she rejected the offer and preferred staying at Ogalpada and work from the centre. She also took private order and altogether earned INR 3500/- a month. She repaid the loan to Sampark and rest of the money was used in the educational expenses of her brother and other family expenses. The SDTC came as a boon in her life and she used the opportunity for good.
