Arisa Praja’s Tailoring Skills Helped Enhance her Household Well-being

The community people in ward 3 engage in their daily schedule from early morning. Early with the sunrise, Caritas Nepal project team also prepare themselves and reach to Bhujel Gau, Ward 3 of Gaindakot Municipality and knock on Arisa Praja’s door.

Arisa Praja with her son comes out and smiles and greets to the team. She shies and says “I am sorry! I do not have a chair to offer you to sit in my house”.

This clearly illustrates the economic resilience of the project community of Urban DRR. This story is of Arisa Praja, a 26-year-old women from the Chepang Community.

Arisa’s journey into Bhujel Gau began after her marriage to Kul Bahadur Bhujel. She has a 6 years old daughter and a 1-year-old son. The family’s financial stability depended on Kul Bahadur’s intermittent labor work within the community.

To supplement their income, Arisa supports by collecting wild mushrooms in monsoon (June-July). She hardly collects around 5 kg and earn 5000 NPR in the whole season.

I have to walk for several hours in rain and dense forest only to collect 1 kg of mushroom living my child alone at home.

However, this monsoon brought a change for Arisa. She spent good time with her children. She was occupied with order received from the neighbors and busy in sewing clothes.

She shares she had tailoring skills when she was 18 years old, before marriage. She has always kept tailoring as an option to support her family.

But due to poor financial condition of her house she didn’t got courage to request and share about her skills to her husband she says.

Once she shared her tailoring skill to her close friends, and this helped Arisa to get connected with Caritas Nepal Urban DRR project team.

She received sewing machine and tools support from the project. She shared that after receiving the support she had already received more than 18 orders to sew clothes.

She charges 250 per cloth to sew and earns 2500-3000 per month which helps Arisa to contribute for her household and children expenses.

Arisa is grateful for the support received from the Caritas Nepal. With this, she and her husband says “we will transfer this skill to our children to make them self-dependent in future”.

Urban DRR project has provided small micro-enterprise support to 33 households of ward 2 and 3 of Gaindakot municipality. This project activity helped increase the average monthly income by 8.4 percent in supported vulnerable households.