Supporting Vulnerable Women and Children in Kolkata, India

Please empower a young woman today for the price of a visit to the hairdresser... Tabassum, age 20, lives with her family in a single room in Kolkata’s Tiljala slum. Her father supports his family of 4 on Rs4000 (£44 or USD57) per month. She has recently qualified in hair and beauty therapy at the iSalon, NGO  Tiljala SHED ’s tiny Beauty Training Salon. “Because of my father’s low income I left education early. When I came to know from one of my friends, that a free course i s being offered at this place, I immediately visited the parlour and decided to join. After joining, I was confident that this skill will surely help me out of poverty. After completion of course I applied to many salons but they offered maximum 2500 per month for 9-10 hour days. Then, I consulted with the trainer who helped me and now I have 8 clients and earn close to Rs.2000 per month. I have requested the trainer to start more advanced courses which has a demand in the market and which will help us...

Situated down an alley right beside Kolkata’s notorious Darapara slum and the Park Circus railway squatters encampment, is a tiny room about 2 metres square which has become a beacon of hope for destitute girls from the area.   It is Tiljala SHED’s Beauty Training Salon – a vocational training centre giving hope to girls who would otherwise have had little expectation of life beyond an early marriage and a life of poverty, childbearing and drudgery. Madhu is 19. She lives in a shelter beside the railway lines with her parents, 2 younger brothers and an older sister.  Her father is a street hawker selling sattu (a traditional drink made from chickpeas and spices). He earns around Rs200 a day – that is about £2.20. Madhu is ambitious but struggled with school and eventually dropped out in class 10.   She was an enthusiastic participant in the first batch of girls to enrol in Tiljala SHED’s beauty Training Programme and passed out first in her ...

I visit Kolkata and Tiljala SHED two or three times a year. I love to catch up with old friends and spend time exploring my favourite city.  But most of all I love to be part of the great work Tiljala SHED is doing amongst the city’s most vulnerable communities.   Those who live in the canal-side and railway squatter camps of East and East Central Kolkata lead the most difficult lives.  Originally landless poor from rural Bihar and West Bengal, these families would have come to the big city for a better life. And in some respects, that’s what they have: the chance to collect, sort and sell other people’s waste enables them to eat.  They build illegal shelters on government owned land but are mostly left alone.  Occasional home-destroying fires, disease, lack of toilets and sanitation, drinking water rationed to a few hours a day are probably seen as a reasonable trade-off for leaving the hunger and backwardness of their former rural lives....