Lighting a Home

Alaguponnu is born to Pandi and Lakshmi in 1987. She has two brothers. They live in Koodalmalai which was situated nearby Thirupparankundram, Madurai. Her father is an agricultural labourer and the sole breadwinner of the family. Her two brothers studied up to the sixth standard and become masons for shouldering family responsibility. Alaguponnu studied up to 10th standard and got married at the age of 20.

Marriage life

She got married to Karthik Kannan and has four children. Three daughters studying 8th standard, 6th standard, 3rd standard and one son studying kinder garden. It is due to her mother-in-law’s insistence to have a baby boy, she was forced to have the three daughters. In this situation, she delivered a baby boy in her fourth delivery.

Education to children

Her husband is also a mason. His earnings are not enough to run the family because her family is big including her in-laws. In this situation, their children had grown and were to school now. Due to the family situation, she is not able to afford her children in private English medium school. Her children are studying in Tamil medium Government school situated at Thirupparankundram.

Income sources

The main wage earner in the family is her husband, her father-in-law is working as a cleaning staff in a neighbourhood college and her mother-in-law works in an old iron scrape store. Through these contributions, they manage their living. The family of eight members find it very tough feeding and managing all the financial basic needs. Hence after her fourth child, her mother-in-law went to work as a domestic worker as it fetches more income.

In this situation, she came to know about three months free tailoring courses offered in her area. After completing all domestic works, she underwent the tailoring classes. Now she has purchased a tailoring machine and has started doing odd tailoring works. She is earning Rs.250/- to Rs.500/- month as she is yet to attain proficiency in switching and added as financial support to her family.

Being in Kalanjiam

Pasumalai location was promoted in June 2015 with support from WomenStrongInternational. It aimed at organizing the disadvantaged in the urban limits of Madurai. It's in June 2016 she joined as a member of Seelaikari Kalanjiam. It took six months to get the group organized. The members were not forthcoming to get organized because of the bad experiences they earlier had in running an SHG. After the continuous followup of the field associate, they got organised as a group.

She joined as a member in the Kalanjiam and during the quality check process, she was elected as the President of the group by all the members. On being selected as a leader she underwent the capacity building programs and has transformed into a very guiding and responsible leader.

Kalanjiam inculcates savings habit of all the members, Alaguponnu is no exception. She has no savings before joining Kalanjiam, now she has Rs.6517/- as her savings in the past fifteen months. On July 2016 she took her first loan of Rs.1843/- for meeting the educational expenses for her children and repaid it in two months. She has obtained a second loan of Rs.10000/- for house repair, repaid the loan promptly and got her third loan of Rs.20000/- in September 2017 for establishing an electrical connection at her home.

All along they live without electricity at home, the ordeal is quite difficult. Her husband return home late from work and the family have food in the open space in front of their home in street light. Now through the Kalanjiam loan, they had got access to light. She has a dream to provide good education to her children and feels the electricity access would achieve her dream.