Chennai Tailoring Team
With the help of the Amaidhi Foundation, a tailor training school has been set up in the slum area of Kalyanapuram-Vyasarpadi in the North of Chennai (Madras). Women and girls from the slums follow a course for one year and then received an officially recognized diploma. With this they can exercise their profession as dressmaker independently or work in a sewing workshop.
Until the end of 2007, the Foundation gave money every year for the exploitation of the Chennai Tailoring Team. This went towards the purchase of machines and furniture, the salary of the needlework teacher, maintenance of machinery and awareness-raising meetings. Aim of the project is to make women (economically) independent. In 2006, the project was financially ended with the formation of an investment fund for the small workshop that is derived from the project.
Women can also receive a loan from the Fund to buy their own sewing machine. In addition, training courses can be paid for. During the years that Amaidhi supported the project (2000 to 2007) a total of four hundred women trained to become a dressmaker. The project now stands on its own feet.
Brother Sigamani Animation Centre
The Community Center where the Chennai Tailoring Team has found accommodation is called Brother Sigamani Animation Centre (BSAC). BSAC is a self-help organization of residents of the slum Kalyanapuram in Chennai (Madras). They belong to the dalits, or untouchables, the outcasts of the Indian society . BSAC tries, via various projects, to improve life for slum residents.
In addition to the tailoring project that Amaidhi supports, it concerns:
- Drop out schools: children who no longer go to primary school or work in child labour, receive non-formal schooling. They are motivated to go back to a regular school.
- Book fairies: BSCA has a library with simple school books where children from the district can borrow copies from.
- Computer training: boys and girls learn to work with computer programs as Windows, Word and Excel.
- Courses in the field of civil rights and emancipation.
- Sports activities and scouting
