Stitching hope
By Laura Lee
St. Paul’s Cathedral (of the Church of North India) runs a variety of programs through Cathedral Relief Services (CRS) that empower women in Kolkata through education and vocational training. We visited one such program that will be another special connection for Presbyterian Women.
One of Tollygunge’s slums is mostly Muslim, and the families who live there bear devastating poverty. Many of the men in this area work as migrant laborers, sending a little money home when possible. The women in the slum have very few, if any, employment opportunities and, tragically, turn to work in the brothel on the outskirts of the slum.
The CRS sewing project at Tollygunge offers women and girls from the slum an alternative to life in the sex trade. Inside a small, cinder block building—roughly 10' x 10'—20 girls were seated on the floor in a hot, dimly lit room with two small windows. By stitching on paper patterns, the girls, who were in their teens and 20s, were learning embroidery and taking turns learning sewing on the room’s one sewing machine. Another building housed a workshop with more sewing machines, where totebags are created.
These embroidered totebags will be the official totebag of the 2012 PW Gathering. The girls were happy to meet us and proud that they were learning a valuable skill and creating a product that we’ll use proudly and prayerfully.
Laura traveled to India in October 2011 with Presbyterian Women’s Global Exchange.
Invite the participant from your synod to your next event to share more insights from this life-changing trip.
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