By Phurbu Thinley
Phayul Correspondent
Dharamsala: The graduation day of the eighth batch of SOT (Stitches of Tibet), a tailoring course for unskilled and unemployed Tibetan women refugees managed by Tibetan Women’s Association (TWA) was held here today.
The vocational training course first initiated in 1995 has so far successfully produced 75 female graduates, including nine of them graduating this year.
The course lasting for 18 months, teaches the woman students multifaceted tailoring and handicraft-making skills, which also include specialising in designing various Tibetan and western costumes.
This scheme of TWA has been designed to facilitate unemployed Tibetan women, especially the new arrivals from Tibet to find a possible way out of their financial difficulty by equipping them with vocational skills.
According to TWA, the driving force behind the project is to enable the “economically disadvantaged Tibetan women refugees, who lack employment and educational opportunities, to be self-reliant by teaching them tailoring skills”.
As per TWA’s statement, all the entire SOT graduates are now either self-employed or are being employed in various handicrafts institutions.
TWA feels that the project is an outcome made possible by the generous support of many individuals, both exiled Tibetans and westerners alike. Of them, Mrs. Phurbu Dolma, a former Tibetan parliamentarian, has been instrumental in raising funds with her friend’s help to provide each of the graduating students from the second batch in 1997 to the 2005 batch with a sewing machine each.
However, this year, TWA has been able to raise its own fund to sponsor each graduating student a sewing machine each and has made announcement to continue to do so in the coming years.
In the meanwhile, classes for the next batch of SOT is due to start from tomorrow.
TWA is headquartered here in the northern Indian hill town of Dharamsala, the seat of the Tibetan Government in Exile led by the exiled Tibetan leader, His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
To know more about TWA and their objectives, visit: www.tibetanwomen.org
