Pics from Shoshana Sewing centre, Giripuram, Vijayawada.

Pics from Shoshana sewing centre, Vijayawada City.


Sewing centre, located at Giripuram area, one of the slums in Vijayawada. Hemima the instructor has been giving her support for the past 10 yrs in different areas of Vijayawada for the self help of the women.

Hemima not only being a teacher for the sewing students but also taking  over all care for each woman.  This area is full of daily workers like construction workers, rod bending workers, domestic helpers etc. Most men are alcoholics and HIV patients. There is lot of domestic violence in this area.

So training in sewing and embroidery is providing an income for majority of the women  like women who are  victims of domestic violence, left by their husbands or who are taking care of their sick husbands etc.

Instructor Hemima is also taking care of their medical needs and providing them with basic medicines who are in need of help.

One such case:
Name of the student:  Lakshmi
One of the students from tailoring batch. 32 years of age, married. She has two small children.( 4yrs and 2yrs).

Left by her husband. Lakshmi is staying at her parents' house. Lost her father when she was young. Mother is old and sick. Lakshmi is working as a servant maid to take care of her family.

Presently she has Hernia problem and she needs surgery to get rid of the problem. She is very poor and she can't afford to pay for the surgery. Being the only working one in the family she has to work for the living in spite being in pain. She is asking her friends and relatives for help for the surgery. The local society came forward to help her to some extent but she needs more money. She is requesting Shoshana to please consider her case and help her to come out of the problem.

Have been to different medical projects in and around Chirala town and few pics from Shoshana Medical project, Swarna village.

The Nurse Mr. Raju has been taking care of two medical projects , one in Chirala and in Swarna. Depending on the need he is keeping himself available at both the projects.

Observed that  most of the people coming to the medical projects have acidity and Indigestion problems. People coming here are mostly agricultural coolies and daily workers. Usually they are having irregular eating habits. I think they need awareness camp regarding diet besides medication.

New pics from Shoshana sewing centre, Pedanandipadu village.

The instructor Mrs. Sivakumari has new group of women. Women not only from Pedanandipadu village also few students from near by villages coming either with an auto or bus.

Sivakumari has been working in this area for a long time so she is familiar as a tailor as well as teacher so many women are interested to join the course and she even has requests from other villages to start a centre in their area so they too will have an opportunity to get a free class.

The two girls in the above pics finished their schooling. Parents are illiterates and daily workers in agricultural fields. These girls sometimes helping their parents in fields or looking after the household work.

The woman in the middle is a school drop out and housewife, husband is a daily worker in oil mill.
All of them has no other better option to earn their living except working in fields. They are very much interested to utilize this free sewing class to support their families.