Narendrapur, Dec 4: As part of its initiatives to empower rural women, Tata Steel BSL has started a new tailoring training centre for women of villages near its plant at Narendrapur in Dhenkanal.

After COVID-19 lockdown, the CSR wing of the company has opened a new training centre in Raghunathpur village under Nuagaon Panchayat for the members of Self-Help Group (SHG)sunder its Women Empowerment and Entrepreneurship (WEE) which was formally inaugurated by Dibyahas Ray, Head, CSR, Tata Steel BSL. This 3- month long training programme will equip the 25 members of 7 SHGswith basic skills on tailoring as well as knowledge on market linkage to help them make livelihood from this.

This initiative was started in December 2019. By now 133 women from six villages including Itap, Kurunti, Kusupanga, Nuagaon, Sibapuraround the plant have already been trained. From them 36 members spread across 23 SHGs of 9 villages under the umbrella of Gruhalaxmi cooperative have prepared 74,000 masks during the pandemic and worked as community COVID warriors by supplying masks to the villagers as well as to Tata Steel BSL.  Now they are procuring 35 deluxe automatic sewing machines in a subsidised rate so that they can foray into commercial stitching in a competitive way.

The success of these projects is expected to have a long-lasting impact on the local communities that have been severely affected by COVID-19 pandemic.