Chakra Project, building resilience and preserving traditional knowledge.
As part of the community resilience building program and preservation of traditional hand stitching skills, the women are encouraged to empower themselves through education, self-care, and training in new skills of designing, cutting and hand stitching in the textile art, inspired by the seven Chakras.
At the heart of this Project is to increase the social and economic resilience of the women in Kashmir and every women involved in this project is also a proud owner of their own micro enterprise.
The Chakra Project is set up in collaboration with Earth Kind CIC as skill development and micro enterprise model which has allowed many women of Kashmir - in the foothills of the Himalayas, to change their lives, heal their past and overcome some tough life experiences and take on new challenges, whilst learning new skills.
Through undertaking new skills of hand stitching, embroidery, designing and stitching, the mind of the girls is trained to be keen on the patterns and movements during the process.
Also working around vibrant colours have a profoundly calming and therapeutic effect on the girls who come to learn the new skills, which enhances their emotional, mental and spiritual well being, and in turn, boosts their confidence and morale, and helps them to heal their past and create better future.
This in effect enhances their overall performance and as such improves on the overall mental capacity of the individual. The ability of the brain to create and follow logic in creation of the patterns is effective in creating a self-induced state of staying in focus and girls are encouraged to implement this in their daily life.
The women involved in this project have come from difficult backgrounds, where they had been disadvantaged or marginalized by the factors like exploitation, high unemployment, lack of education and by other social and cultural restrictions.
Working as a team has encouraged many women to come forward to take the first step to change their lives, which also has profound effect on their children's and extended families and at the same time they are preserving the traditions , a way of life and much needed traditional knowledge and hand skills.
Chakra Project, building resilience and preserving traditional knowledge.
By setting up training and small workshops in activities such as Chakras and the positive effects of the colours, chainstitch, handicraft, tailoring, cutting and designing, the women learn new skills and begin to understand the art of creativity and self healing which in turn, boosts their confidence and morale, and offer a self-help channel. These workshops open up a whole new world for these women who previously had no access to formal education and therefore had very low confidence in their ability to do anything. The human spirit is a delicate that needs to be nurtured, but, with the right support, can always be brought back to life.
Skills for life
The School of Healing Arts, where small group of local women every year are involved to learn and then go and make beautiful handmade Chakra design products by using their new and some traditional skills, with the inspired use of local materials cloth, thread, dyes etc to create some thing meaningful and beautiful, unique, spiritual and of course practical.
