In 1999, SPEED Trust (Slum People Education and Economic Development) started its activities in one of the biggest slums of Chennai, namely Gandhi Nagar - Sathyavani Muthu Nagar.
The first project implemented was a tailoring training, with the objective to provide skills, especially to the girls who, this time, where often dropped-out from school by their parents on attending puberty.
For the last ten years, SPEED enabled dozens of teenager girls, then young women, in learning tailoring. After one year training, each student was provided with a sewing-machine so she could start her own activity at home instead of working as a construction casual laborer along with her husband and sometimes her children.
In the same time, SPEED set up an education program, motivating and encouraging the children in following studies, focusing always on girls. Nowadays, in this area, 90% of the children go to school, some of them have already completed nursing courses, some others have been admitted in different engineering colleges.
Hence, the tailoring training became useless, and SPEED launched instead in 2009, Varnajalam, a production unit employing now 8 former students and a showroom located in the slum itself.
The first project implemented was a tailoring training, with the objective to provide skills, especially to the girls who, this time, where often dropped-out from school by their parents on attending puberty.
For the last ten years, SPEED enabled dozens of teenager girls, then young women, in learning tailoring. After one year training, each student was provided with a sewing-machine so she could start her own activity at home instead of working as a construction casual laborer along with her husband and sometimes her children. In the same time, SPEED set up an education program, motivating and encouraging the children in following studies, focusing always on girls. Nowadays, in this area, 90% of the children go to school, some of them have already completed nursing courses, some others have been admitted in different engineering colleges.
Since 2002, to face the need to purchase year after year new sewing-machines, SPEED taught also handicrafts, and simultaneously, the organization set up a group of women who knew how to weave wire baskets made from polyethylene, a recycled plastic.
The first woman involved in this activity was Ravethy, almost blind, and now permanently appointed to train the other women. SPEED Trust dedicated this training especially to physically challenged women or HIV affected, because it is difficult for them to get a job outside the slum.
The first woman involved in this activity was Ravethy, almost blind, and now permanently appointed to train the other women. SPEED Trust dedicated this training especially to physically challenged women or HIV affected, because it is difficult for them to get a job outside the slum. SPEED Trust started to sale all these products locally with the aim to raise funds in support of the training program, then, in order to promote and market them worldwide, BALADARSHAN has been created.
Progressively, some other organizations approached us, seeking our support to promote also their crafts. BALADARSHAN became soon a network of 20 and more South Indian NGOs, all producing handcrafts to make their social project sustainable. BALADARSHAN became member of the Fair Trade Federation (http://www.fairtradefederation.org/) in 2004, and member of the World Fair Trade Organization in 2010 (http://www.wfto.com/).
http://www.newint.com.au/shop/baladarshan-p357.htm
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