Fifteen years ago, Ayesha was pregnant with her second child when she met with an accident in her village in Uttar Pradesh, one of India’s most economically backward states. With no affordable medical help available, Ayesha, her husband Shakil and their daughter Reshma travelled across the breadth of the nation, to Mumbai, where her operation left her unable to walk for more than 10 minutes at a stretch.
The family never left Mumbai after Ayesha’s treatment, and Ayesha went on to birth four more children. They settled into a slum community near Mumbai’s largest garbage dump, lived in a tiny home beside an open drainage canal, and survived on Shakil’s sole income as a construction labourer.
When Vision Rescue first met Ayesha, she was burdened with the expenses of sending her four older children to the municipal schools nearby. Ayesha was determined that her children would lead lives free of poverty, but she herself had never finished school, and she knew no employable skill for a steady income.
How excited she was to learn that our Beacon Learning Centre could freely educate her fifth child Iqra, and even provide vocational skills courses for women just like her, both right within her slum community! Iqra joined our senior kindergarten, Ayesha joined our paper-bag making course, and the oldest daughter Reshma joined our tailoring course.
After a year with us, Iqra graduated from our learning centre, and she’s now ready to join a formal school to continue her schooling. She loves poems and Math, and she can’t wait to become a doctor when she grows up!
Ayesha and Reshma too successfully completed their courses, and while Ayesha is now able to supplement her husband’s income with her new skill, Reshma has bigger dreams. During our tailoring course, Reshma attended an awareness workshop about nursing as a possible career option, conducted for our trainees by I-care, our partner NGO. Reshma jumped at the opportunity, and she’s soon going to become a nursing assistant through I-care!
Reshma is so thankful to you for empowering her. She looks back to when she first met Vision Rescue, and her father was about to pull her out of her schooling because she’d begun menstruating. It was Vision Rescue’s counselling to her father, that convinced him to let her complete her education, instead of becoming a drop-out followed by early marriage. Today, she’s so proud and eager to begin her career!
Thank you for standing by the women of this family, for believing in their potential, and for investing in their dreams.
