Year 2004-2005 Annual Report

With great satisfaction we wish to record that our Womens Empowerment program through Chhaya-The Shelter, vocational Training Center for Women has been making gradual but constant progress. After 3 years of self-sustainable activity of training of underprivileged urban poor women of Jammu region, our Center has earned a name for itself. The out-reach of the program, both in terms of attracting more women to join as well as customers has been substantiated in the past year. We now have a customer base of over 100 who repeatedly give us tailoring orders. This has not only given an impetus to the program but also has helped generating more funds to train more women. All the expenses of the Centre including the salary of the two tailor masters and permanent women tailors is being borne by the income generated by the Centre. Chhaya, as a profit making activity, now independently bears entire maintenance of the Center which was earlier being supported by our mother organization, Scope. We have been able to renovate the roof of our main premises (hall) where trainees are trained on mechanized machines with the income generated by the Center. This has been made possible by the income generated by the Center.
 

To promote our prime objective of providing free training and a source of income to the underprivileged women trainees, we have also introduced a system of ‘Incentives'. Each trainee who has an attendance of seventy percent or above with at least 6 hours of time spent daily for at least six days on machines is being given Rs. 50/- as an addition to money earned by her at the end of the month. This has not only encouraged them to learn with more concentration and regularity but also has made sure that our program is taken seriously by trainees. The reason for such a system arose when we felt that some trainees did not intend to take up the program seriously since it is free of cost. In the process some deserving women would have suffered since we have limited capacity and the trainees have limited time to spend out of their houses.  We record with satisfaction that this minor addition to the system has paid off in favour of the trainees which is our prime mission. So much so that now the trainees insist on coming on Sundays also. In addition to our eight fully trained women from last year who have been given permanent employment, we also have 22 fresh trainees. Number of trainees who have been successfully trained at Chhaya has risen to 42 this year. Out of which few trainees have gone independent and have started working and earning from their homes, now that they are skilled, since they had difficulty coming to the Center due to household responsibility. The freedom of working out of home has been appreciated by trainees as well as community members. Our objective is being met as long as skills provided by the Center enables these women to earn a respectable livelihood. Our endeavour is to train and provide employment to at least ten more women, considering our limited capacity in terms of space and infra-structure. Salaries earned by the eight permanent women tailors have gone up to Rs. 2000 per month from Chhaya. This amount is likely to increase as each of their tailoring skills increase and also with more work at the Center. Looking at the demand of our high quality standards of stitching, it seems necessary for us to set up satellite centres of Chhaya at different localities as proposed earlier. We are in the process of selecting appropriate venue for the same. However we are hugely restrained due to lack of funds in order to pay rentals for the venue. We are hopeful that in sometime we would be able to generate enough funds to begin at one satellite center.    

With great pride we also wish to record that Chhaya participated in the International Womens' Day on March 8th 2005 organized by the Womens' Development Corporation (WDC),Jammu & Kashmir in collaboration with Department of Information& Publicity, Government of India. Chhaya was invited to collaborate with the WDC. It would only be fair to say that the celebration of the first International Women's Day in J&K would not have been possible without our support as prime collaborators where 1500-2000 women from all over the state attended the function with the Hon'ble Chief Minister, Mr.Mufti Mohd.Syed as the chief guest. Other dignitaries included Hon'ble Minister of Social Welfare, Mr. Mula Ram and other prominent personalities of J&K from all sectors were main invitees. Project Director, Chhaya, Ms.Anupma Sharma headed the State level Committee responsible for complete management of the program which included welcome of the Chief Guests and other dignitaries, welcome gifts, security, publicity, souvenirs and refreshments. It was proposed that each person attending should be given a welcome gift as a remembrance of the first International Womens' Day in Jammu & Kashmir. Chhaya took over the responsibility of conceptualizing and producing the same. A souvenir with a difference of giving all participants,  beautiful Duppattas with silver trims was decided upon. 1500 pink duppattas were bought and the trainees at Chhaya stitched trims to it for which they earned Rs. 1 per duppatta according to the number of duppattas made by each trainee. At the end of the program 1500 women were given creatively packed refreshment which was also packaged by trainees at Chhaya Center. Every trainee earned Rs1 for number of packets made by each one of them.

A grand rally with placards made by Chhaya was organized as the Finale to the celebration. Chhaya trainees participated in the 2 kms long rally which terminated with an encouraging note by the Managing Director, WDC, Prof. Masooda Yaseen who not only appreciated and acknowledged efforts made by Chhaya but also expressed herself as indebted to Chhaya team without which the event would not have been successful. The programme was greatly appreciated by the participants, trainees and the community members who acknowledged Chhaya team as diligent organizers for future events as well. It was the first time that Chhaya trainees participated in an event of such magnitude. It has given them a lot of encouragement, recognition and a feeling of equality to our women trainees especially with the media highlight Chhaya received. (PHOTOS)

Hon'ble Chief Minister also released a Book on the occasion of first International Womens' Day celebration which was produced by the Department of Information & Publicity, Government of India. The book featured an impressive article about SCOPE and CHHAYA. Project Director, Chhaya also featured among the ‘Prominent Personalities of J&K working towards Women Empowerment'. This book has been circulated in all Government departments in J&K as well as New Delhi including the J&K House in New Delhi. This is being considered as an achievement since it provides SCOPE/CHHAYA a platform to aggressively promote our program of empowerment of women and avail this opportunity to achieve our main objective to bring recognition and respect for women in the society.