Ongoing Projects - Weaving

New Design and Technology for Weavers and Embroiders of Khunti

The project “New Design and Technology for Weavers and Embroiders of Khunti” was sanctioned by the Ministry of Rural Development, Govt. of India under SGSY on September 2006. This project is being implemented by Ambalika NGO.

Ambalika established its branch office in Khunti in September 2007. Since then the work implemented by Ambalika broadly can be listed as:

Our Field officer traveled in the interiors of villages in and around Khunti to document probable places where the aforementioned craft existed in traces.

This was a painstaking work as the villages once involved in doing this craft had long ago left it for economic reasons. Once these places were documented and decided to work upon, Ambalika started a long series of Awareness camps to educate craftspeople about re-evoking the craft and how it can generate employment to them. This was tedious work. To re-generate confidence amongst weavers and embroiders to start re-doing the craft is difficult, as they are now almost scared of probable false promises and hopes given to them by lots of agencies in past, who have just used them for personal gains.

The awareness camps went on for weeks in which all villages were covered.

Once we realized that craftspeople are gaining confidence we helped them for “SELF HELP GROUPS”. One group has 20 members. Currently we have 50 SELF HELP GROUPS. We have opened bank account for each group in ‘Bank of India’ at Khunti branch. Each Self help group is made to understand the value of savings and they are encouraged to deposit Rupees Five per member per month in their account.

For the months of September to December Ambalika deposited the entire amount of all self help groups in the bank for them to start getting into the habit of savings.

When the above said work was happening, back end work was also been organized from Delhi office of Ambalika. Ambalika hired DESIGNERS from NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF FASHION TECHNOLOGY, NEW DELHI for doing an in depth RESEARCH and SURVEY in Khunti and other craft rich locations of Jharkhand. A team of designers traveled and exhaustively researched crafts available in Khunti, Haaribagh, Dumka, SinghBhum; to name a few. A detailed report of it is already submitted.

With all the collected data the team of designers then traveled to Khunti to start the training/workshop for ‘New Design and Technology for weavers and embroiders of Khunti’

The training program started on 19th December’2007.

The salient features, accomplishments, current position and shortcomings are mentioned below.

WEAVING:

All the Weaving villages had long ago given up their looms for different employments (mostly for manual labor jobs) also a large percentage were daily wage earners or simply unemployed.

We have been involved since the beginning of this project to make them available looms for training and for future occupation.

This has been REAL CHALLENGING as each village had specific looms. There are no local loom makers available now. There are lots of very specific parts of the loom which were made by certain families which are almost extinct now.

We have been also training local wood crafts men to repair and construct looms for these villages.

CURRENT POSITION AT SELECTIVE VILLAGES:

KITAHATU:
This village has one group with 22 members.
There were only 2 working looms in this village.
We have provided 16 looms more for the training.
Note: Due to shortage of funds, we had make use of Bamboo parts instead of solid wood parts for the looms. Though the workings of the loom are not affected, the life of the loom reduces greatly in the longer run.

There are only 6 people with skill level above average, the rest are being trained in basics before we can proceed to newer techniques with them.

PIDIHATU:
This village has one group with 20 members.
There were only 3 working looms in this village.
We have provided 14 working looms for the training program.

SHUNTI:
We have managed to provide only 6 looms in this village. Work has stalled.

SARITKEL:
This village has 3 groups, part for Adivasi looms and small minority for Frame looms. We have to provide 50 new loom in this village. No work can start currently in this village until we can buy/get new looms constructed.

BICHNA:
This village works only with Frame looms. We had to hire a place which had 6 frame looms (we got them repaired in working condition).

Sadly with six looms 32 people are getting trained.

HAND EMBROIDERY:
More than 250 craftswomen are attending this training from last month. For last one month these women are being trained in haw to design motifs for embroidery coupled with new embroidery techniques.

Ambalika is providing pencil, papers, fabric swatches, needles and all other basic stationary for them.

The project involves us in believing and working towards creating a UNIQUE IMPACTFUL LOOK OF JHARKHAND CRAFT. This indeed is really a challenging task as we are actively trying to re-invoke past extinct designs and sensibilities and are re-interpreting them in present. We have a vision of seeing large groups of craftspeople working with dignity and respect with honest means of employment for them.

Our Designers travel and stay at project sites working with each craftsman individually to achieve this goal. It would be dreams come true for lots of craftsmen to have a steady means of income.