Sahaitha

A community center for women to meet, build relationships and find peer support for education and life skills

The story of Sahaitha

In a culture in which many of us live by expectations of others, are treated as mere work force, are taught to deny our feelings, and subjected to the crushing of what dreams we hold, we at Sahaitha invite people to experience love, care and deep friendships with each other.

We have worked in the same locality for well over a decade-and-a-half and have followed the community through many different seasons. A large proportion of the women coming to us are migrants who find it difficult to navigate life in the city. We seek to empower them through providing education and skills training, making sure they are registered and have necessary papers, and helping those who are sick to connect with the medical care they need.

We also engage with migrant children through non-formal educational support.

Our Approach

Under our literacy programs, we help women to attain basic literacy and train them in English and computers. We also help women to pursue higher-level classes or college degrees. We help women with their online applications and admissions, sorting out necessary documentation, and teach them their basic rights.

We offer informal education to children from migrant communities and tuition support to school-going girls.

Our skill-building classes include tailoring, cooking, and baking.

Our support groups are instrumental to help women find perspective and tools to overcome difficulties, especially in the areas of relationships, violence and family life.

We Provide...

Education

Support Groups

Medical Support

Counseling

Social Benefits Assistance

"Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty."

- Mother Teresa

Sakshi's Story

Teenage Sakshi* belongs to a nomadic community that keeps moving around in search of jobs. For most of her life, her only experience of family has been a broken one: Her father was a drunkard and abandoned the family. When she and her two sisters were little, her mother married another man and started a new family with him.

This left Sakshi and her sisters to be raised by their grandmother, who was very poor. Sakshi and her sisters had to work from a very young age simply to bring food to their own table.

Over the past year, Sakshi and her sisters began coming to the Sahaitha Center for schooling. They have proven very keen to learn. Though having had no prior education, they have quickly picked up the basics of Hindi and English reading and writing as well as maths.

Seeing their rapid progress stirred hope in our hearts that, with education, they might be able to break out of a cycle of poverty.

However, just as we were beginning to prepare them for their public exams, we learned that their family had decided to move to another location.

What will become of Sakshi and other young women like her? Will she find people in her new locality who will encourage her to continue studying?

We believe this is not the end of the story for Sakshi or her sisters, for we are sowing seeds of hope in them. They have promised to attend our online classes, going forward.

We hope that Sakshi and others in her generation will be able to make the choice to get off the streets and to live in more stable environments, both for their own future and for the future of their children. ❦

Seema's Story

Gathered in a circle with six other women, Seema* speaks about her struggles. It’s late afternoon, and the women have come to our center for a twice-monthly support group.

Seema shares how much she was impacted when her oldest sister was married off as a teenager. Like Seema, her sister had grown up in the city, but the marriage prompted a sudden move to her husband’s home in the village. She was forced to drop out of school, even though she had enjoyed studying, and found herself under the control of her husband and in-laws.

Seema decided she would not let herself be pushed into the same path. Though a quiet and shy person by nature, she dared to oppose her community’s traditions which place early marriage as a priority for young women. Knowing it might upset her family, she looked for a job and became employed. As it turned out, because of financial pressures brought on by the Covid pandemic, her family did not object. She decided to continue her education, which led her to our center.

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During the two years of Covid, Seema faithfully attended our online classes and online support groups. Yet today, she and the other women are enjoying the opportunity to meet face-to-face. Seema explains to the support group participants how she is wary of marriage, because of having had negative experiences of men.

Other women around the circle nod knowingly. They too have experienced the kind of abuse Seema is describing. Their empathetic response must mean a lot to her, as she has disclosed in private conversations that she struggles being the only person in her family who speaks openly about abuse and the lack of freedoms offered to women. She has questioned why her female relatives seem to be okay living with pretense. Why don’t they speak out?

Being an isolated voice within her family has also caused her to question herself. Yet here at Sahaitha, Seema finds safe space to express the pain she has encountered. As she experiences the fact that other women believe her and can relate to her difficulties, she finds strength to continue to speak the truth. ❦

*All names have been changed to maintain privacy

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