Jaipur will host the first ever fashion show of the garments made by rural and tribal women of Hindustan Zinc’s project “Sakhi” on 28th October 2015 at Hotel Clarks Amer.

Home Minister Gulab Chand Ji Kataria, Women & Child Development Minister Anita Bhadel, Rajkumar Rinwa minister of state mines, forest and environment will inaugurate “Sakhi” Fashion Show. The event will be presided over by Diya Kumari, the brand ambassador for ‘Beti Bachao’, Additional Chief Secretary women & child development Rakesh Srivastava and Commissioner Women & Child Development Richa Khoda.

Renowned fashion designer Jattinn Kochhar, Rajdeep Ranawat, Gaurav Gupta, and Anand Bhushan will attend the show to see the garments made by “Sakhi” rural women. The current Miss India 2014, Koyal Rana would be part of the show as show stopper.

Hindustan Zinc has been engaged in empowerment of rural and tribal women of Rajasthan since 2006 through formation of self-help-groups known as ‘Sakhi’ which have developed product based clusters to strengthen the social and economic conditions of these women.

Under the Project “Sakhi” 50 rural women of village Gagwana and Kayad in the district of Ajmer have been working for almost 2 months to make designer garments. An exclusive training in this regard was provided to these rural women, most of whom are educated, as part of development of “Sakhi” product cluster on fashion garments.

The show is choreographed by leading Asian choreographer Rashmi Virmani and would have leading models from Delhi and Mumbai.

Pavan Kaushik, Head of Corporate Communication and Project “Sakhi” informed that under the project “Sakhi” the focus is to develop a hub of karigars that can help fashion designers from across the country, fashion students and other fashion experts. It is not easy to find such a hub of karigars at one place and this is expected to be useful for the fashion industry. With this cluster, Hindustan Zinc is aiming to create a sustainable employment for these women. This will also encourage thousands of rural women to take-up this creative art.

Naveen Singhal, President- Projects in Hindustan Zinc informed that “Sakhi” would also present designs for the uniforms for children of Anganwadis and Nand Ghar. Recently Hindustan Zinc had adopted 3055 Anganwadis and the mats and school uniforms in these Anganwadis is being provided by “Sakhi” rural women. Vedanta has recently also signed MoU for making 4000 Nand Ghars across the country to bring child care and women empowerment under a single umbrella.

The trainers, Zakir Khan and Rajni Kaur Khan when started training them had to face tough times as most of these women had no background knowledge. A small workshop was conducted under the “Sakhi” project to ascertain their creativity. These women lived at distance and engaging them for long hours was difficult.

“Zardozi, zari, gota-patti, danka, pearls and embroidery work needed continuous sitting for hours and initially it was difficult to convince them.  But once they started learning and working, they never saw time” says Rajni.

Zakir and Rajni are from Udaipur and have been staying in Ajmer so that they can be with these women and develop this fashion hub.

These women have made 48 garments like sarees, sarwar kurta, kurtees and kaftans, in a record time of about 45 days. Delhi based stylist Joyjeet has been engaged to give final touching. 12 uniforms patterns would also be presented in the show. Asha Baxi, the former Dean of National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) and perhaps the first fashion faculty of India visited these women along with the students and faculty of Fashion Design.