Hindustan Zinc to showcase fashion garments made by “Sakhi” rural women on the fashion ramp on 28^thOctober in Jaipur

50 “Sakhi” rural women of village Gagwana and Kayad in the district of Ajmer have been working for almost 2 months to make designer garments. A training in this regard was provided to these rural women, most of whom are educated, as part of development of “Sakhi” product cluster on fashion garments.

“Under the project “Sakhi” by Hindustan Zinc, our focus is to develop a hub of karigars that can help fashion designers from across the country, fashion students and other fashion experts. It is not easy to find such a hub of karigars at one place and this is expected to be useful for the fashion industry. With this cluster, Hindustan Zinc is aiming to create a sustainable employment for these women. This will also encourage thousands of rural women to take-up this creative art”, said Pavan Kaushik, who is the Head of the Project “Sakhi” in Hindustan Zinc.

The karigars now, Furkana Bano and Kukum Kavar of village Kayad had no experience of such a work. As they say, the rural conditions never exposed them to such an art. Similarly Tabassum Bano and Ryaj Bano from village Gagwana always wanted to do something like this but never got a chance for such training as it was quite expensive. Wasima Bano from village Kayad had only one thing to say, “yeh sab hamari ummedon se uppar hai”.

The trainers, Zakir Khan and Rajni Kaur Khan when started training them had to face tough times as most of these women had no background knowledge. A small workshop was conducted under the “Sakhi” project to ascertain their creativity. These women lived at distance and engaging them for long hours was difficult. “zardozi, zari, gota-patti, danka, pearls and embroidery work needed continuous sitting for hours and initially it was difficult to convince them.  But once they started learning and working, they never saw time” says Rajni.  Zakir and Rajni are from Udaipur and have been staying in Ajmer so that they can be with these women and develop this fashion hub.

These women have made 48 garments like sarees, sarwar kurta, kurtees and kaftans, in a record time of about 45 days.  Delhi based stylist Joyjeet has been engaged to give final touching.  Asha Baxi the former Dean of National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) and perhaps the first fashion faculty of India visited these women along with the students and faculty of Fashion Design. Asha Baxi is setting up Fashion Design Department in the Indian Institute of Crafts and Design, Jaipur.

To showcase these garments, Hindustan Zinc has now given these women a platform through “Sakhi” Fashion Show on 28^th October 2015 at Hotel Clarks Amer, Jaipur. The show is choreographed by leading Asian choreographer Rashmi Virmani and would have leading models from Delhi and Mumbai. Renowned fashion designers like Jattinn Kochhar, Niki Mahajan, Rajdeep Ranawat, Gaurav Gupta, and Anand Bhushan would be present during the show.  The current Miss India 2014, Koyal Rana, would be part of the show stopper.

“Sakhi” would also present designs for the uniforms for children of Anganwadis and Nand Ghar.

Hindustan Zinc has been engaged in empowerment of rural and tribal women of Rajasthan since 2006 through formation of self-help-groups. Today, these SHGs are popularly known as “Sakhi”, and the women associated with these SHGs as “Sakhees”. “Sakhi” has developed product based clusters to strengthen the social and economic conditions of these women. Clusters of fashion garments, school uniforms, home furnishing, candle making, spices, floor mats, pickle and papad, paper craft etc. have already been developed that have been successful in bringing sustainable empowerment in hundreds of these rural and tribal women.