My Children, My World

- Priyanka Venkatasubramanian

Surekha (second from the right) with her colleagues in Sant Krupa Hospital

Surekha Madhukar Paghare is a 28 year old widow from Manmand in Nasik. She joined the Bedside Assistance course in our Nashik Centre in December 2013 and is currently working as a trainee in Nashik’s Sant Krupa Hospital. She got married at the age of 15 when she had only finished her education up to the 9^th Std. Within 2 years of her marriage she gave birth to her first child, a daughter, who is now 12. She also has another daughter aged 10 and a son aged 10.

 

Her life plunged towards a downward spiral when her husband died six years ago. She has been living with her parents ever since. She moved out of her in-laws’ house for reasons so grave that she finds it imprudent to reveal them. No one from her husband’s family offered her any support except for her brother-in-law’s children. She explains her decision to refuse their help, “I thought back then that my nephews would one day have a family of their own with their own responsibilities so I should learn to be independent from the very start.” At this juncture one cannot help but be in awe of the maturity and integrity she displayed even as a twenty two year old.

She had before her the daunting task of raising her three children single- handedly. One can get a glimpse of her resilient attitude during this tough phase of her life when she says,“ I had to become my children’s mother and father. I had to prove myself even though I am not educated.”

In the past six years she has undertaken numerous jobs to make the two ends meet like working as a sales person; going from door to door selling cookers, stoves etc. and working as domestic help. Her mother too worked as domestic help and contributed to the family income while her father succumbed to alcoholism. In the year before joining the bedside assistance course she was working as a mavshee or aayah in Sai Seva Hospital.

It was there that she heard about the course from another aayah and was encouraged by a nurse to take up this course since she had seen Surekha show a good understanding of the intricacies of a nurse’s work. Even though working as an aayah helped her earn a decent salary it did not help her earn respect. Her children would feel hesitant to speak about their mother’s profession. Moreover she was overburdened with work and was constantly bogged down by threats of cuts in her salary. All this prompted her to leave her job and take up the course. 

Subhasree Mohapatra, a Budding Entrepreneur

Subhasree Mohapatra is a student at the Entrepreneur Skills Training Center at Jajpur, Odisha. She belongs to a poor family, with her father working as a labourer. There are 6 members in her family, in which her father is the only earning member. Her monthly family income is Rs. 6,000.

She was keen to start earning so as to be able to contribute to her family income and support her family. She joined the Entrepreneur Skills Training Center at Jajpur and has recently completed the tailoring course. After the completion of the course she wanted to earn income by starting her own business, but, she had no money to buy a tailoring machine and the raw materials needed to start the same. However, based on her interest and capability, she was eligible to be supported as an entrepreneur through the Entrepreneur Program being run by Pratham and Citi Foundation.  


She received the needed material through the program and is now earning a daily wage of Rs 50. Today she is happy because she is able to cover her personal expenses through this income, and is also able to support her younger sister. As this is just the start, she hopes that her income will increase in the coming months as she gains more clients.

Pratham’s entrepreneurship program in conjunction with Citi Foundation aims to reach many such individuals who want to support themselves but do not have the means to do so. Through its entrepreneurship centers across the country, Pratham has supported upwards of 400 entrepreneurs in starting their own micro-enterprises in sectors such as Beauty, Tailoring and Pre School.

The Story of Renuka Gawade...

Renuka Gawade belongs to the district of Gadchiroli in Maharashtra. Her father was a farmer, with a very low income. Despite, abysmal financial conditions, Renuka managed to complete her education till the 12th grade. She aspired to study further, but decided to give up this dream to support her sister for higher education. She took up a job at a local hospital earning a meagre salary of INR 2000 per month to sustain her sister’s education.

Renuka was unhappy with the long hours and the insufficient pay. After working for a couple of months, she stumbled upon a brochure of the Pratham Hospitality Training Program. She decided to enroll herself in the course.

Midway through her training, she received the news of her father’s death.  The sudden demise of her father, left her devastated. Despite this, she pushed forward and with the support of her friends and the faculty she successfully completed her training. She is now placed at Leonia Hoslistic Destination at Hyderabad with a salary of INR 6,000 in addition to food and boarding.

Recognizing Potential- Our Ambitious Entrepreneur, Vrushali

Vrushali Dengle, has studied till the 9^th grade. She is a housewife with two children. Initially lacking confidence, she wanted to do something that would make her financially independent and help her support her family. She heard about the Pune Entrepreneur Training Center through Pratham’s mobilizers. With the center being close to her home, Vrushali was able to enroll. She was interested in the Beauty course and attended her classes regularly, eager to learn new techniques and tricks to the trade. She also simultaneously enrolled in the Foundation Course so as to hone her soft skills while helping her increase her confidence and basic mathematics. Post completion of the course, she appeared for the examination and scored 86%. She expressed her interest to be selected for support to start her own micro enterprise and post screening, was selected for the same.

Today, she has fulfilled her dream of being financially independent. She runs her own beauty parlour and is earning well, between INR 6,000 – INR 7,000 per month. She says, “I have been living here for the last five years but no one knew me. Today, after completing the course through the Entrepreneur Center run by Pratham and supported by Citi Foundation, I am well known and am invited to all the functions in the area. I am proud of myself, but more importantly, my husband and children feel very proud of what I have achieved.” 

Conversations in the Hinterlands

By Azeez Gupta

A quick introduction – I have recently joined the Pratham Institute as part of a pursuit for happiness and meaning. The past 2 years spent working at a renowned consultancy saw me engage in stimulating work with fantastic minds – yet I could never escape the nagging feeling that I was coasting. I missed the violent single-minded passion I experienced during my most fulfilling college years, and hope that working for a cause again will help me re-discover those emotions.

Seeing as I came to Pratham as a relatively green, mostly city boy, who had grown up seeing the poor, but had never really interacted deeply with underprivileged people, I was promptly packed off to see all our programs and centers on the ground. The resulting 2 week trip through the hinterlands of Maharashtra was truly eye-opening. I met dozens of our students, learnt about their lives and heard their stories. In the process, I went from being an armchair intellectual to… well, definitely not an expert, but someone who’s starting to get a pulse of India today. The things we all pontificate about, but really know very little about. In this post, I will try to put down some of my observations, as I remember them. These are random and unstructured reflections, often mundane, and accompanied by my unsolicited comments – but may be interesting to my peers, as cossetted as I was.

• I asked students what they liked best about their time at Pratham training centers. The quickest and most enthusiastic response – “Shaving”! Shaving?! Here we are, claiming to turn your lives around, give you opportunity and all that jazz, and what you like most is shaving?! It was very endearing – and jokes apart, the shaving was part of a broader theme of following rules and regulations and living a structured life. Concepts that we elites resist resolutely, but are both important for and attractive to these young people who’ve lived their lives in relative chaos.

• The level of attention in classes and devotion to learning was extraordinary – it put me to shame, looking back at how many of my batch-mates and I went through our IIT education.

• I heard the personal stories of many students – most were from villages and had absolutely no jobs available at their homes. They spent their times roaming around the fields aimlessly, with nothing to do, and occasionally working on the farms. It bought the scarcity of opportunities home to me very starkly, especially in contrast to the vast expanse of options I have been blessed with all my life.

• The more things are different though, the more they remain the same When I asked what kids use the computer center for, after their daily studies are over, there was a lot of sniggering followed by the euphemism ‘watch videos of movie stars on the internet’. Young men are the same everywhere!