From Skill to Sustainable Livelihood
Kalaiselvi, 34
A helping hand with the right tools can transform a skill into a source of independence.
- 6
- women now employed
- 3x
- monthly household income
- 18
- months trading without support
Placeholder story. Replace with a real account recorded with the participant's consent before launch.
When we met Kalaiselvi she was working alone on a borrowed machine, taking whatever piecework came to her and waiting sixty days to be paid for it.
The gap was not skill
She had fifteen years of experience. What she lacked was capacity and a reliable buyer — two problems that a tailoring course would not have touched.
What support looked like
Two machines, working capital for one month of materials, and an introduction to a uniform supplier who settles within a fortnight. That was the whole intervention.
Eighteen months on
Five other women work with her, four of them the primary earners in their households. The workshop has not needed further support and is now training its own recruits.
What we took from it
We ask what someone already does before we propose anything. It has changed how we spend the livelihood budget.
“The training everyone offered me was in something I already knew how to do.”
