New Sewing Project at Gamela Bazar, Vijayawada.

Rag pickers area - Gamela Bazar, Vijayawada.

There are around 1500 to 2000 people in this area who mainly depend on  waste picking. They collect recyclable waste from dump yards and garbages,  segrate them and sell them for money. Each family has around 4 or 5 kids. Kids are the main income sources for the family.

As we observed, most of the families are run by single parent. Women left by husbands, take care of the children. Because of the family burden, children also take up the same job to survive. Living in poverty, unclean surroundings without proper help from the Government.

A lot of garbage is cleaned informally by the rag pickers in urban areas of India who work without any proper wages. Collecting waste is a difficult and harmful job. Not only that they are exposed to harmful substances, infections, respiratory diseases and abuse on the streets.

During the Covid lockdown they had lot of difficulty in getting a single meal. Some of the NGO's provided groceries for them during that time.

We thought of giving them an alternate job opportunity, so that they could use it to run the family and have a decent living. Besides that encouraging the children to go to schools.

Shoshana started a sewing project in this area - with some women who are interested to take up sewing as their career. Hemima - Instructor who is working with Shoshana for more than 15 yrs came forward in helping these women.