Bhuvaneswari : LEND A HAND TO THE HANDLOOMS
Bhuvaneswari aged 24 hails from Dindigul. She comes from a family of 5; she is one among three daughters where her family business is Handloom. Bhuvaneswari comes from a community where girls were not encouraged to study; rather they were involved in their own cottage business and prepared them to get married at a very young age. Handloom, being their occupation from their roots. She learnt all the techniques in weaving from the age of 10. Whilst she dreamt to become a nurse, her family situation made her to walk in different path to earn bread and butter for the family.
At the age of 20, Bhuvaneswari got married to Premkumar, who is also from her community and does the same occupation. Once married, Premkumar wished to start his own handloom business where he was looking for help to build own handloom weaving in his house, but to his vain the interest rates were high in money lenders. Through our women Self Help Group we offered support for women beneficiaries in Handlooms, Bhuvaneswari join in the group and received her support and built their own loom .They started weaving handloom silk sarees. As a couple, both of them used to weave 5 sarees a month and sell them to the nearby retail shops. They have also received custom orders from certain customers. In a month, on their sole occupation on weaving, they used to earn Rs 12,000 a month.
Earlier, their major setbacks were mainly in buying silk threads individually for every single sarees which costed them more. But through our support on Self help group, Bhuvaneswari has used the help to buy the silk threads in bulk in wholesale rates; the no interest loans have helped them to run the family without hassle.
Bhuvaneswari and Premkumar have been blessed with a daughter, who is 3 years old, where as parents they strive hard to educate their daughter irrespective of their communities’ superficial matters against girl children. Through, Rural Institute of Community Health, Better future have been instilled among young children in communities.