Visit to Sajhe Sapne training Center on a Workation
Recently we went for a workation to Palampur, Himachal Pradesh. We stayed at Linger — The Earth House, Palampur.
During our workation, we got to meet some interesting people who have left urban life to move to rural areas and are working from there. Thanks to our friends @Harpreet Grover and @Bhakti Thakare for inviting us to join them at such a beautiful place and making us meet some localites out there.
One of them was @Surbhi Yadav, Founder & CEO of Sajhe Sapne. She is on a mission to ensure women in rural India have the opportunity for a thriving career.
It was a Saturday evening, amidst nature with beautiful mountains in the background and green land fields, where @Surabhi Yadav came to Linger — The Earth House, Palampur
She explained her work about #Sajhey Sapne and how she is training these 25 girls who are above 16 years of age for them to aspire more and to find thriving career opportunities for them by providing them equal access to opportunities.
When we met Surabhi, she asked us a question: What do you think women in rural areas do after they finish their 11th std. We had a mix group of people and everyone imagined them to be:
- Married
- Working in a farm
- Working at a Beauty parlour
- Working at a Kirana shop
- Having Children
- Managing household chores
We all answered imagining what each one thought these girls were doing or are capable of doing. We only imagined jobs that are accessible to them and jobs that they would be able to take. She explained to us how we were conditioned to think in a certain way by imagining them to do jobs which are laid out to them for years due to many socio economic conditions that exist in Rural India. After an interesting discussion, I was very keen to visit the Sajhe Sapna training center and meet the girls personally and interact with them. Surabhi was happy that we were interested in meeting them personally.
Me, @BhaktiThakare and @MansiKhanna, all three decided and went there to meet the girls at the Training centre, which is currently being operated from Aavishkar Center for Science, Maths, Arts & technology, A mountain school.
The centre is located at such a beautiful location, you can get a 360 view of mountains. The place was just amazing.
As we reached, all the girls were very excited and called us “Didi” “Didi”. Each one introduced themselves and shared their interests, dreams and places where they came from. There was so much diversity in the group. These 25 girls came from different villages in India. Most of them aspired to work on a social issue and on SDG goals and one of them even aspired to be an IAS officer.
Listening to them and their interests and aspirations made me realise that these 25 young girls are full of dreams and aspirations. There must be so many other girls in rural India who aspire or dream big but due to lack of access to thriving career opportunities and digital disconnect, they are not able to fulfil their aspirations or their dreams.
I was surprised to know that in India, over 60 percent of women have never used the Internet in 12 states and union territories as per the recent survey of NHFS.
In India, Approx 40% population is living below poverty line, illiteracy rate is more than 25–30% and digital literacy is almost non-existent among more than 90% of India’s population as per Digital Empowerment Foundation.
Digital Literacy, Digital Access, Digital Infrastructure and Skill building are so important TO BE IN THE JOBS YOU ASPIRE FOR” .
Creating equal access for career opportunities through skill building for rural women is a great stepping stone from being Digitally Powered to being Digitally Empowered Rural India.
Kudos to Sajhe Sapne and Surabhi Yadav’s passion to attempting to remove this disconnect of opportunities and aspirations for rural women by providing them proper skill building to prepare them to Achieve, Aspire & Dream More.
Lets support #SajheSapne and on its movement for #skillbuilding #digitalliterarcy #digitalempowerment #equalaccess #ruralwomen #india.
