Mangla overcomes her obstacles with great self - confidence

Hi, I’m Mangla Meher, a student of PACE Hospitality Training Center in Udaipur. I belong to Mathania, a small village in the Jhalawad district of Rajasthan. My family has 5 members including my father, who is paralyzed, my mother who is a homemaker, my brother who is married yet unemployed, and my uncle who is a farmer and who is the only earning member in the family. I completed my education till the 12th grade with great difficulty. I helped my uncle in his daily agricultural activities but the monetary yield was not enough to feed my entire family. Hence, I decided to take up a full-time job but found that I did not have the required skills.

Coincidentally, around that time I met Arjun Sir (Pratham mobilizer) who came to my village to inform us about the PACE hospitality training program. He gave me a ray of hope and I immediately wanted to enroll myself. Though I did not know much about hospitality and about the placement prospects, I knew I would be pursuing the course to help my family financially and this motivated me to join the course.

Bhuneshwari dares to go against the norms

Bhuneshwari, who is just 20 years old, comes from Biretara, a remote village in Dhamtari , Chhattisgarh. Most of the women in her community are involved in agriculture or manual labor. They are usually unable to pursue proper education and end up in unskilled jobs. Bhuneshwari also had no choice but to do the same after she passed her 12th standard exams from the Chhattisgarh State Board.

She did not personally like the menial work she did, and wanted to use her formal education to build her career, but did not know how to go about it. One day, she ran into one of the Pratham mobilizers who went to her neighbourhood to mobilize students. She got intrigued by the hospitality training that was provided at Pratham's centers and convinced her parents to enrol her for the course at PACE Aurangabad Hospitality Training Center. She had never travelled outside her village, but for the first time she travelled alone to Aurangabad, which was more than 800 kms away from her village. It was simply unheard of for the women in her village to find work elsewhere, but Bhuneshwari dared to go against the norms.

Empowering women to start micro-enterprises

At our Vocational Skilling PACE (Pratham Arora Center for Education) Centers situated at various tier 2 cities in Maharashtra, such as Nashik, Satara, Chembur and Kolhapur, we impart knowledge to youth in various fields. We educate them in courses such as Foundation Course, Tally, Desktop Publishing, Mobile Repairing, and so on. But the courses designed especially for women include Fashion Designing, Bag-Making, Basic/Advanced Beautician and a few more. These courses help women in rural/semi-urban areas, who usually cannot go far away from their house to gain knowledge, find new ways through which they can run their micro-enterprises from their houses. In the bag making course for example, students are not only taught how to market the bags, but also the process of calculating the manufacturing costs and deciding the selling price, amongst other things. They are even able to design new bags after finishing the course. Thus, these courses establish self-confidence in women who wish to contribute to the society in their own small ways.

One such group of women is the group of Bag-Making students at our Satara center – (Left to Right) Prajakta Lokhande, Rajeshri Powar and Jayeshri Bhingardeve. They liked the training they received from us and believe it will help them in their entrepreneurial pursuits. Let’s get to know each one of them briefly –