Tata Steel BSL’s Tailoring Training Centre Benefits Women Of Six Villages In Odisha’s Dhenkanal

Narendrapur: As part of its initiative to empower rural women, Tata Steel BSL has started a new tailoring training centre for women of villages near its plant in Dhenkanal.

After COVID-19 lockdown, the CSR wing of the company has opened a new training centre in Raghunathpur village under Nuagaon Panchayat for the members of Self-Help Group (SHG)s under its Women Empowerment and Entrepreneurship (WEE). It was formally inaugurated by Dibyahas Ray, who heads CSR, Tata Steel BSL.

The three-month-long training programme will equip the 25 members of 7 SHGs with basic skills on tailoring as well as knowledge on market linkage to help them earn a livelihood.

This initiative was started in December 2019. By now, 133 women from six villages including Itap, Kurunti, Kusupanga, Nuagaon, Sibapur around the plant have already been trained.

Thirty-six members spread across 23 SHGs of nine villages under the umbrella of Gruhalaxmi Cooperative have prepared 74,000 masks during the pandemic and worked as community COVID warriors by supplying masks to the villagers as well as to Tata Steel BSL.  Now they are procuring 35 deluxe automatic sewing machines at a subsidised rate so that they can foray into commercial stitching in a competitive way.

The success of these projects is expected to have a long-lasting impact on the local communities that have been severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.