Building Bridges India

ut, thousands have taken their own lives. In some districts there has been at least one suicide a day for years. Their deaths are tragedy enough. But for the widows they leave behind,
life also becomes a desperate struggle simply to survive. Untrained and
unorganized, often illiterate and malnourished, burdened with their
husbands’ debts and without any way of earning an income, they are
responsible for housing and feeding themselves, their children and
often their elderly relatives, as well. Building Bridges India works to meet the needs of this lost generation
of women, first in a single pilot project in an especially hard-hit district,
Sangrur, and then, with help from friends around the world, in other
districts, too. We have begun gathering the widows of Sangrur– isolated
and afraid– into supportive, self-help groups that will allow them to
address their problems together, as a community. Our project team. led by Field Director Gazala Khan, is already putting in place a variety of educational and vocational training programs aimed at helping widows find their way out of the misery in which they are mired. These range from instruction in how to open a bank account to the best way to maintain a kitchen garden, basic reading and writing skills to the revival of traditional Punjabi arts such as weaving and phulkari embroidery. By listening to the women’s needs, we seek to help them help themselves to a sustainable, self-reliant future.