WomenWeave Charitable Trust

The primary role of WomenWeave is to serve as a bridge to better lives by:

• Creating a community of weavers and connecting them with potential customers.
• Providing crafts skills training and organizational and design assistance.
• Valuing and integrating traditional design and cultural heritage to realize more marketable products.
• Generating selling opportunities and market connections in India and abroad that would otherwise be inaccessible.

Their ongoing programs are:

• Gudi Mudi Khadi Project, Maheshwar, and Madhya Pradesh: Gudi Mudi means 'scrunched' in the local language. 'Scrunched' is the attractive, natural look of textile from this project. Based in Maheshwar, Madhya Pradesh, Gudi Mudi skills marginalized women in the spinning and weaving of locally grown cotton. Much of this cotton is organic; and so is much of the yarn dyeing. The cloth they weave presently sells in more than fifteen countries around the world.
• The Handloom School: WomenWeave provides invaluable training to young men and women with basic weaving skills, but a desire to become entrepreneur weavers. Candidates (maximum 15 per batch) selected are provided with Barefoot Business and Computer Skills, Basic English, and Special Design Exposure. Today some young weaver groups run microbusinesses from their own websites!
• Women & child welfare & empowerment program: Eyes which have strained to see fine threads since a very early age need care and glasses which are not easily available or affordable for women in remote rural areas. WomenWeave holds eye camps in such areas and provides them with much needed eye glasses and further care as necessary.
• Synergy Program, Maheshwar in Madhya Pradesh & Nainital in Uttarakhand: WomenWeave occasionally collaborates with other reputed NGOs to create very successful textile collections: centrally designed, executed and marketed. Over the years strong bonds have been formed between handloom clusters. They now share information about everything from pre-loom techniques, to equipment, design and marketing approaches.
• Khatkhata project, Dindori, Madhya Pradesh: Dindori weavers are highly skilled, traditional weavers, predominantly male. Their traditional markets are on the wane; so WomenWeave has stepped in to assist them with new skills, product development, and marketing. They now sell their hand spun scarves both in India and internationally. Their women earn and learn while spinning the yarn that their men weave.