Mumbai: Football coach empowers women of Ambedkar Nagar by training them in mask-making

Maruti Chauhan helped collect free ration for his neighbours, most of them migrants from UP and Karnataka. Pic/Bipin Kokate

Maruti Chauhan, 25
Co-founder, Hamari Silai

If the pandemic-induced lockdown hit anyone the hardest, it was the migrant workers. Football coach Maruti Chauhan, a resident of Ambedkar Nagar in Colaba, had heard the horror stories of daily wagers marching home on foot, and some of them not surviving due to starvation or accidents. Ambedkar Nagar, which has a population of nearly 20,000, majority of whom are daily wage labourers from Karnataka, UP and Bihar, was on the edge too, says Chauhan. After the first week or so, everyone started getting restless and frustrated. Living in crammed spaces within shouting distance of each other, didn't help. "I was sitting at home, because the school [Colaba Municipal School] where I coached had shut." He reached out to NGOs, corporates and patrons to support his cause. "We decided to tap into our contacts, sending them WhatsApp messages, asking if they'd like to support the residents of our slum." Within a matter of weeks, Chauhan and team had managed to procure groceries worth R10 lakh, which was then used to support 700 families over a period of three months.

Supporting his community has been at the heart of Chauhan's work. A year ago, he, along with residents Mohan Rathod and Dhanraj Chauhan, launched Hamari Silai, conducting free tailoring workshops at a dingy rented room for female residents of the slum. The skill came to use to make cloth masks. "We took contracts from corporate houses and other organisations. In the last nine months, we have made over 12,000 masks. Since 70 per cent of the money we make from the initiative is distributed to these women, the drive helped support several households in Ambedkar Nagar," he says.

In the future, he hopes to take Humari Silai across the country. "The lockdown has been very hard on me. For a better part, I had absolutely no income. In order to support my family, I started supplying fish door to door. What I realised is that we need to constantly reinvent and evolve if we must survive, but I don't think all my community members are equipped to handle change," he says, adding, "Before the pandemic, my mother and sister used to work at the Sassoon Docks, spending nearly 12 hours cleaning fish. When the lockdown happened, they found themselves without a job. If we train more women, they can take charge of their lives."