350 rural and tribal Women got together to participate
in the First Workshop of Hindustan Zinc's women empowerment campaign
"SAKHI". The workshop was held at Vidhya Bhawan Auditorium in Udaipur today.
The workshop saw discussion and interactive sessions
on changing scenario in the garments and home-furnishing market, development of
handicraft industry, quality check in production, colour combination as per
changing seasons, production as per current fashion trends and pricing of the
products. These rural women also expressed their concerns about the
availability of raw material, need for upgraded training programs, and addition
of new markets for selling products.
The interactive workshop was taken by Prof. Anuja
Sisodia, Indian Institute of Craft and Design. From Hindustan Zinc, Mr. CSR
Mehta- Head Corporate Relations, Mr. Pavan Kaushik - Head Corporate
Communications, Ms. Sushma Sharma - Incharge CSR_HZL also spoke about various
aspects of socio-economic empowerment in rural and tribal women.
Hindustan Zinc has recently launched its campaign
"SAKHI" which will help these rural and tribal women to become a
collective force under a single umbrella, have interactive discussions, share
market knowledge and get more exposure, to ultimately become more social and
economically empowered.
It is said, when you empower a rural and tribal
women, you in-turn make a family socially and economically independent, thereby
energizing a complete village and ultimately contributing towards progress of a
nation. Rural women have always proved their mettle and strength in every sphere
of life. May it be house-hold work, agriculture, handicrafts, tailoring,
traditional crafts or liberal arts, rural women of India have always been
in front and have even dominated the global fashion industry with their
traditional art and skills.
The campaign "SAKHI" has been launched
through blog (www.vedantasakhi.blogspot.in ) which uploads success stories of these women. Another platform
for discussion, deliberations and knowledge sharing has been launched through
facebook page (www.facebook.com/vedantasakhi). Besides 6,000 women and volunteers of
Hindustan Zinc's self-help-groups , about 4,500 people from various fields have
also joined the campaign.