A ray of light for Fatema

A ray of light for Fatema

May 16, 2023

Fatema Khatoon, a 15 year old daughter of Dinislam Gaji and Saleha Bibi. Every year, the family migrates from Paik Para Village of Basirhat to Bipasa brickfield in search of livelihood. Fatema is the second of the three children in the family. Her younger sister also migrated to the brickfield along with them. The eldest daughter is married and stays with her husband at her in-laws place.

The family is very poor as they do not have much to eat or to buy clothes. Fatima is a student of our Model Centre. The girl has a keen interest in her studies.

After our sewing class began at the Model Centre in Basirhat, Fatema gradually developed an interest in tailoring seeing other learners undergoing training. Observing her keen interest, the tailoring instructor enrolled Fatema for the course. At the initial stages, Fatema was a bit nervous, though she had a lot of interest in the subject. We remember her holding the scissors with a trembling hand. Gradually her nervousness went away and she made good progress in her training.

After a period of 5 months of training, she began making her own clothes and dresses. She even mended a few of her old tattered clothes. This made Fatema’s mother very happy. According to the mother, it will be a saving for the family if Fatema learned to mend and stitch her own clothes as well as those of her sister.

However, for Fatema, mending clothes of her sister and herself is not the end of the road. In fact this is just the beginning of a new road in her life. Today, Fatema dreams of opening a small tailoring unit in her village, where she can stitch clothes of other girls and ladies of her village and the neighbouring ones. By this, she can become self-reliant, ending the family’s tradition of becoming migrant labours in the brickfields.