February 2020 Update on the Amaravathi Sewing School Project
Seventeen students began the curriculum at the Pushpa Sewing School in Amaravathi, India when the Sewing School was opened in May 2019. Amaravahti is a small indigenous village in a rural area in the Guntur District in the state of Andhra Pradesh. The school was established with the help of a District 5960 Grant obtained by the Arden Hills Shoreview Rotary Club and support by many other Twin Cities Rotary Clubs. Fourteen of the original 17 students have now completed the curriculum and were give graduation certificates in a recent ceremony in Amaravahti. A picture of the graduating class seated with their arms raised as they wait for their certificates is shown below.
The remaining students are continuing their progress toward graduation along with a new group of students.
Two of the graduating students are picture below, one, who was chosen to speak to the gathering at the graduation ceremony and another who is receiving her certificate from Gummadi Franklin, the Founder Pushpa. Also with the students and Dr. Franklin is the Teacher (Suzanne) and a teaching assistant.
Pushpa has been working in India for fourteen years. Gummadi Franklin was raised in Guntur District of Andhra Pradesh and he and his wife Shirley, who live in Arden Hills, have been paying it forward for many years. Pushpa's mission is to help marginalized community members of rural Guntur District villages transition from migrant, subsistent lifestyles, dependent on seasonal labor and temporary shelter, to sustainable livelihoods in healthy communities. Its main goal is to work together with underprivileged (tribal) members of rural Guntur District villages to find ways to enable socio-economic change in small ways, one person, one family, one student, at a time, through projects in which the recipients themselves participate. The organization strives to boost the self-confidence of individuals while at the same time teaching collective responsibility for the community, through teaching vocational skills that develop earning capabilities.
One of the elders in Amaravathi is pictured below after he was given the honor of cutting the green ribbon in a ceremony for the opening of the school last May.
The picture below shows some of the students using the treadle sewing machines in the third floor sewing lab at the sewing school in Amaravathi.
The leaders of PUSHPA, both here in Arden Hills and in Andhra Pradesh, India are especially grateful for the support for the new sewing school from the Arden Hills Shoreview Rotary Club and Rotary District 5960 and have expressed their gratitude privately and acknowledged the Club’s sponsorship of the school by erecting the sign shown in the picture below.
A lot of hard work went into establishing the school and there are many people to thank for their hard work and significant contributions. The Sewing School has now graduated its first class and it is especially gratifying to see that the labor and hard work is now being rewarded and that young people’s lives in Amaravahti are being touched by those efforts.
We and Pushpa are thankful to the following Rotary Clubs for their generous support of our project: Belle Plaine; Brooklyn Park; Forrest Lake; Fridley Columbia Heights; New Brighton Mounds View; Prior Lake; Roseville; St. Croix Falls; St. Paul No. 10; Siren Webster; West St. Paul Mendota Heights; and White Bear Lake.