The Gaddi Women's Self-Help Society
The school in Baal first opened in 2000. It closed for a
period, due to lack of funds and qualified teachers,
but reopened in 2002,
thanks to a grant from SHAMA, Inc. It takes about an hour and a half to walk to
Baal from the nearest bus stop, after an hour and half bus ride. Anuradha
Sharma, the teacher, lives in Shyam Nagar and makes this trip four times a week.
The students in this school are getting more orders for items such as pillow
covers for the local Vipassana meditation center, string pouches for jewelry
shops in Spain, and shoulder bags for sports accessory shops in London. The
income generated from these orders is distributed among the women working to
complete the orders.
Baal has a mediocre government school which does not exceed the 5th class. In addition, the girls drop out at a high rate. The life of a girl or woman revolves around the home and the fields. All year they tend their goats, sheep, and cattle; fetch firewood in the jungle for the cooking fuel; cut and carry grass for fodder for the animals; work in the fields hoeing, fencing, weeding, harvesting, bringing manure to the fields as fertilizer; and raising children, cooking, and housekeeping. It takes a lot of time to train rural women to be tailors, due to their lack of formal education.
Jyoti Chander visited in December 2003. The path to Baal is the most treacherous. On the trek there, they met several women who earn their living by cutting leaves in the forest and selling them to farmers as fodder. The girl on the right is a student in the tailoring school in Naddi.
These women are preparing to cut leaves.
This girl is carrying a load of leaves.
The Baal Tailoring School uses a room in someone's home for their classes.
Students at the Baal Tailoring School, with visitor
Food Making ||
Computer Center || Tailoring
Gaddi home
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SHAMA, Inc. home
Web design by Lynn Kirby, 2004