Arden Hills Shoreview Rotary Club seeks District Grant to fund Sewing School in India
Our Rotary Club (AHS) recently submitted a request for a District Grant from Rotary District 5960 to fund the development of a Sewing School in Amaravathi, Andhra Pradesh, India. The requested funding is for a new school that would be developed by an Indian NGO called PUSHPA, which is the outgrowth of a Minnesota Non-Profit Corporation, also named PUSHA, organized by Gummadi Franklin and his wife Shirley. The Franklins spoke to our club in November, 2017, regarding the activities of PUSHPA’s charitable programs in India that are designed to help marginalized low caste or Muslim peoples help themselves out of impoverished circumstances.
Our proposed budget for the two-year project is $17,550. The proposed project will establish a sewing school to provide needed vocational skills for young women from such low caste or otherwise impoverished families in Amaravathi, Andhra Pradesh. The sewing skills that we anticipate the students will develop will enable them to work in jobs other than as field hands, engage in micro entrepreneurial enterprises and sew clothing for themselves and for other members of their respective families to minimize expenses for clothing in a heavily clothing conscious society, where beautiful clothing is greatly appreciated, especially for women. The young women for whom it is envisioned that this project will serve are very poor and come from historically marginalized communities of people whose only source of revenue comes from field work. Having sewing skills could lift these young women up in ways that little else could.
PUSHPA has been working to develop low cost development projects in India since 2007 and has developed significant institutional knowledge about development projects designed to help marginalized people in Andhra Pradesh, India. Some of these projects have proven to be quite workable with minimal financial commitments. One of the best of these projects developed by PUSHPA has been a vocational education program developed to teach practical sewing skills to young women in Rajupalem, Andhra Pradesh. In the picture below, students from the sewing school in Rajupalem are receiving their certificates of completion. Gummadi Franklin is the man pictured directly behind the young woman in the lavender saari who is receiving her certificate of completion.
The success of the sewing program in Rajupalem has led elders from a different community, in the village of Amaravathi, Andhra Pradesh, to engage the leaders of PUSHPA’s Indian NGO in discussions regarding the possibility that PUSHPA would work with them to establish a new sewing school in Amaravathi. Our project has been developed to help fund the development of this new sewing school.
For further information about PUSHPA, see its website at http://pushpaproject.org/about_PUSHPA.htm.