36-year-old Sandhya Sharma is a resident of Gandhi Colony in Madhya Pradesh’s Shivpuri district. Educated till class 8, Sandhya belongs to a family that is struggling hard to make their ends meet. At present, her husband sell eggs and chicken to earn a living. However, the money they earn is not enough to sustain their family. The financial crunch led to several problems in their house – taking loan at huge interest rate, frequent fights, all this was affecting the upbringing and education of her younger brother and sisters in the house.
“One day, a well-informed sister visited our colony and made us listen to the radio programme - Aajeevika that was informing the listeners on the topic of sewing and tailoring. I heard the complete session and decided to get training from an appropriate place,” shared Sandhya. Within two months, Sandhya learnt the skill of stitching, and simple basic techniques of running a house based income generation activity. Then she started her own business from her house. In the beginning, the profit wasn’t much and arranging for raw material was also bit of a task. But with Sandhya’s sheer dedication and hard work, her work started gaining recognition in the area. Today, she earns Rupees 5,000-6,000 every month which is enough to take care of the children.
Sandhya has deep appreciation about the Aajeevika programme and the agencies who are involved in the making and dissemination of this livelihood programme as this has changed her way of thinking and has helped in resolving the dire problem of earning livelihood, without moving out of her house.
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