Husneara , Project Lehar

Since joining Project Lehar, Husneara (23) has become a double entrepreneur and a community activist. The extra income from her two enterprises – a tailoring business and sewing school – has dramatically improved her family’s quality of life.

Husneara lives in a poor, crowded suburban neighbourhood in Patna, northern India. Like many young women here, she left school in her mid-teens, when she became a wife and mother. Her husband is a labourer and his daily income, already insecure, was badly hit by Covid. With three young sons to support, money is tight.

Until recently, Husneara focused on unpaid care and domestic work at home. But since joining Project Lehar and setting up her businesses, she’s been able to significantly boost her family’s finances.

‘Since my husband’s income is not enough to support a family of five, the money I’m earning through my skills is crucial,’ she explains.

Problem solving for earning

Project Lehar, run by the Aga Khan Foundation with support from The King’s Trust International, runs vocational training, entrepreneurship and life skills courses that together enable girls and young women from disadvantaged backgrounds to increase their earning power and improve their lives.

Husneara says that the entrepreneurship skills she learned at Lehar, particularly around saving, budgeting and resilience, enabled her to kickstart her plans to launch her own business, while the life skills classes built her confidence around communication, creative thinking, and problem solving. These skills were essential from the outset as Husneara had no sewing machine and no funds to buy one – so she arranged to borrow a machine from a neighbour, and got started.

Husneara’s sewing students together pay her £17 a month, and she brings in extra money from her own tailoring work too. In a neighbourhood where the average family income is less than £40 a month, Husneara’s contribution is making a big difference, especially in covering schooling costs for her children.

Flexibility and entrepreneurship

For young women in Patna’s poor suburbs, finding paid work outside their home is fraught with difficulties. They often have lower levels of education than boys, little access to money for transport, and are already managing heavy unpaid care and domestic workloads. They are also held back by traditional cultural expectations around young women staying at home.

But for low-income households like Husneara’s, women’s earning power can be transformative, dramatically improving the quality of life for whole families. And when women’s earning power increases, so too does their influence and independence. So when practical and cultural barriers prevent young women from accessing paid employment, Project Lehar empowers them to find flexible ways to earn. These are generally focused on small-scale entrepreneurship activities that build on women’s existing skills.

‘I work from home. I’m self-employed,’ Husneara explains. ‘I prefer self-employment. It’s more flexible for people like me who need to take care of the home, even though we want to earn. I can work and take care of my kids.’

Income, influence, and independence

Women’s status within their families often shifts automatically when they become valued breadwinners, as Husneara has observed – noting that her husband’s attitude has changed, and she now has a say over decisions around household spending.

Recently, with support from The King’s Trust International, Project Lehar has rolled out a new programme to further build young women’s skills, confidence and influence: the community challenge. This sees young women apply and practise their planning, budgeting, and communication skills in real-life situations, working in small teams to design and deliver a project of their choosing in their local community.

Husneara was among the first cohort of young women to take part in the community challenge. She and her team delivered a nutrition awareness campaign, focusing on anaemia and the importance of iron-rich foods. Lehar surveys have since shown a significant increase in the number of young women regularly eating pulses and green leafy vegetables.

As Project Lehar supports young women like Husneara to take their first steps into earning, entrepreneurship, and public life, it is not only empowering them to improve their own quality of life and develop their communities, it is also helping to transform perceptions around young women’s roles, capabilities and status.