New Delhi, Oct 4 (KNN) To encourage women become entrepreneurs at the village level by imparting sewing and stitching skills, Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) has announced a tie-up with Usha International Limited (UIL).

The women are also being trained on the maintenance and repairing sewing machines. As many as 35 women are a part of the current batch under the Mission Swavalamban to set-up their own centres of sewing and stitching.

The training centres have been set-up as part of the programme wherein the women entrepreneurs are offered sewing machine, certificate, training-kit, and the Signage board on successful completion of the training programme.

“Armed with their newfound skills, we hope that each one of them will soon be on their journey to chase their entrepreneurial dreams and come out flying colours. It’s a great beginning to an amazing journey with SIDBI,” said Mary Rupa Tete, Vice President- Usha Social Services of Usha International.

According to Mohammad Mustafa, Chairman and Managing Director, SIDBI, so far, the programme has already trained 70 women from Ghazipur and Gaya. The programme will set up 1000 such centres in 1000 villages of five states including Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Bihar and Telangana in the next one year.

Usha’s Silai School programme which was launched in 2011 is a rural initiative of UIL to focus on the women from marginalised sections. It has 21,219 such schools across all Indian states, 100 in Nepal, 20 in Sri Lanka, and 3 production centres in Bhutan.

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