A number of women refused to be daunted by financial and social hardships and fought on to be self-reliant and to support their families as well as other women.
The women learnt tailoring and some of them started their own ventures and employed other women.
An NGO that has worked with some of them for over two decades felicitated them at a programme in New Town recently.
Nasrin Sultana was among those felicitated. The 42-year-old learnt tailoring in 2002 and runs a shop that employs four women.
Sultana could not afford to pay Rs 30 a month back in 2000, when she learnt tailoring from Nurani Islam, who later founded the NGO Atghara Jyoti Mahila Udyog.
“My mother was a teacher in a pre-primary school and my father barely earned anything. We are five sisters and I could not afford to pay Rs 30 a month,” said Sultana, whose tailoring shop is in Polerhat in South 24-Parganas district.
“But now I have employed other women, whom I taught tailoring. I have also built a house from the earnings from my shop,” said Sultana.
He has also trained her husband in tailoring and he now helps her run the shop.
Another woman felicitated is thankful to her mother-in-law for the skills she picked up to make a living. The 39-year-old, who runs a shop in Lauhati in North 24-Parganas district, was accompanied by her mother-in-law to the tailoring class every day because her husband refused to be by her side.
“I employ women because I want to empower them. I understand the kind of ordeal they have to go through and I want to make them independent,” she said.
Islam, their teacher and the founder of the NGO, is no stranger to hardship. “I know what women go through and my aspirations to become financially independent helped me give a life to the aspirations of other women,” she said.
Islam started the NGO in 2006.