Skill Training at Ampang Community Centre

ERA Consumer Malaysia under the EU funded project, with the support of Friedrich Naumann Foundation is currently running 8 Community Centres to bring about empowerment of Indian women in Malaysia. The Community Centres (CC) conduct various activities each month covering personal development, skills building and income generation initiatives. Under Skills Building, the women are taught how to make a variety of products so as to enable them to start small scale enterprises. By engaging the women in income generating activities, the family’s standard of living goes up and reduces the economic tension in the family.

At Ampang Community Centre about 30 women attended a workshop on making tissue boxes. The women were taught the practical skills on how to knit tissue boxes, as well as given basic understanding of how to determine the cost involved in making the boxes The participants were also taught the marketing strategy of the tissue boxes, the place to sell them, at what price and how to promote the product.

The Community Centre seeks to raise the socio-economic status of Indian women so that they can sustain their own living by providing the women with alternative means to earn extra income, and this is done through various skills training and other income generating activities.

The women have since used the skill learnt to make tissue boxes and either place them at local shops for sales or have received orders from clients for the product. Community Centre Ampang also exhibited the handicraft work of the women at an exhibition in the town centre. Some families are earning up to RM 500 per month as extra income from the sales of the tissue boxes and other handcraft items.

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