The Tejaswinis in Making

They are the Tejaswinis in making. Like the ones in Tata Steel’s Jamsedpur Steel Plant, the tribal women members near Kalinga Nagar area in Orissa, are being trained to undertake various activities and become self-sufficient.

The Tejaswini training programme, designed by Tata Steel aims at empowering women for a developed society, provide them opportunities of alternative livelihood, and educate them about their role in sustainable industrialization and development of their own community and region. After successfully coming out of the training programme, each of the participants is referred to as Tejaswini, and is thus considered to be empowered.

As a first step in this direction, a training-cum-exposure visit was organised for 17 tribal women, who belong to different SHGs, at Gandhi Labour Foundation, Puri. The training was organised by Tata Steel. The participants represented SHGs from Baghuapal, Bajrapali and Kandesahi in Jajpur district.

In this initiative the participants in were enlightened about new avenues of income generation, available assistance opportunities from industries and the government, raw material procurement, technical assistance and proper marketing of the products. The participants were also taken on a trip to Pipili to get an idea of the appliqué industry there and develop interest in different crafts for livelihood earning.

Smt Rasmita Sirka, the leader of the women group attending the training-cum-exposure visit at Gandhi Labour Foundation says, the SHGs fail to make profit due to lack of knowledge about rotating the profit into their business and enhance the production. But, Tata Steel makes it a point to educate the SHGs in terms of enhancing productivity, acquire loan, market planning of products and utilization funds through workshops and exposure visits.

We are thankful to Tata Steel for the knowledge, guidance and confidence provided to us. Now we are confident that we can also make profitable products at our SHGs and stand on our feet, Smt Sirka added.