From One Sewing Machine to a Six-Woman Workshop
Kalaiselvi, 34
She did not need to be taught to stitch. She needed a second machine, and someone to introduce her to a buyer who paid on time.
- 6
- women now employed
- 3x
- monthly household income
- 18
- months trading without support
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When we met Kalaiselvi she was working alone on a borrowed machine, taking whatever piecework came to her and waiting sixty days to be paid for it.
The gap was not skill
She had fifteen years of experience. What she lacked was capacity and a reliable buyer — two problems that a tailoring course would not have touched.
What support looked like
Two machines, working capital for one month of materials, and an introduction to a uniform supplier who settles within a fortnight. That was the whole intervention.
Eighteen months on
Five other women work with her, four of them the primary earners in their households. The workshop has not needed further support and is now training its own recruits.
What we took from it
We ask what someone already does before we propose anything. It has changed how we spend the livelihood budget.
“The training everyone offered me was in something I already knew how to do.”