Growing up in the small town of Mithi in Sindh’s desert district of Tharparkar, Devi Khatri knew that opportunities were limited in her hometown, particularly for people of her gender. 

Instead of taking the oft-trodden road, she charted out a new path — not just for herself but others like her, by setting up an institute where young girls can undergo training in fields related to information technology (IT) as well as the English language. And she has done it all before turning 25. 

“It was very difficult and I faced many challenges,” says Devi. She had seen her father, and others from her Khatri community, spend their lives as poorly paid artisans, mostly toiling away dyeing and colouring fabrics that were block-printed for sale in the bigger cities. Others would spend hours stooped over shawls and chaddors as they adorned them with Thari motifs and precise geometric patterns.

She saw the opportunities dry up as mass-produced materials replaced handcrafted block-prints, with artisans often forced to seek employment elsewhere. Her father, Hemraj Khatri, was one of them. He would later turn the sitting area in his home into a small grocery shop to support and sustain his family. 

But Devi had other plans. Unlike her six elder siblings, she was the first one in the family to attain higher education. The comparatively affluent town of Mithi, with a population of around 50,000, offered better opportunities compared to the rest of Tharparkar district, with its abysmal literacy rates.

A young woman from Mithi has set up a vocational training institute in her hometown, and has a dream for digital employment for the area’s girls

According to the 2023 census, only 16 percent of the nearly 300,000 people of Tharparkar have completed matriculation. For girls, the figure goes down to 11.25 percent and gets progressively worse for higher levels of education. 

Devi is among the handful of women who have bucked the trend, completing her postgraduate education from the University of Sindh Jamshoro. Before that, she went to government schools in Mithi and did her intermediate from the sole girls’ college in her hometown.

At that time, she was studying to be a doctor, in line with her parents wishes. “But I was always interested in the English language and computers,” says the young entrepreneur. “The world of computers and IT is extremely broad and diverse, with opportunities to earn, including for those who can only work from home, for whatever reason.”

She switched tracks once in university and was soon attending certification courses in programming and website design and development. 

Her first job was as an English language instructor at a vocational institute in Mithi, which also offered courses and diplomas related to IT. While there, she enrolled in several courses and was soon armed with certifications and diplomas. Within the span of a year, she was tasked with the job of instructor for IT courses as well.

When she started, she was paid Rs8,000 per month. The mandatory minimum wage in the province at that time was Rs17,500. “I would end up spending half my salary, or 4,000 rupees, to pay for travel,” she says. “The rest I would use for household expenses.” 

She would soon be tasked with getting students to attend the course, with commissions supplementing her income. When she quit, in 2023, she was earning close to Rs50,000.

But more than that, she had tried her luck at freelancing. “My first job was to create a [website] landing page, for which I was paid five dollars.” 

It also helped her realise that she was worth more than the measly Rs8,000 she was being paid. In the years that followed, she scaled up her freelance work. In that time, however, she also lost her father, which dented her aspirations to land a foreign scholarship.

After quitting her job at the language and IT institute, she worked for six months as a co-trainer and monitoring officer for a project of an Islamabad-based training and consultancy firm. The project included enterprise training, with attendees given tips and guidelines on how to market their skills and businesses online and offline.

All this while, Devi says she kept doing freelance assignments — seeking work on LinkedIn, Upwork, Fiverr, Freelancer and an assortment of others websites and portals. In this, she says her language skills helped her land a lot of opportunities. 

Riding the wave of the gig economy, she co-opted others who she had taught or helped — either in person or through online contact. It helped her not only manage her workload but also scale it up by outsourcing assignments.

With the volume of work and the availability of talented youth, says Devi, the next logical step was setting up an institute.

“When I wanted to study, I had to work really hard to convince my parents. It was the same when I started working,” she says. “This is the reality for the overwhelming majority of girls in small towns and villages.”

Her goal was to set up an institute where women could acquire the IT and computer-related skills that would allow them to work remotely. The template was already there in the form of another such institute that had been started by another entrepreneur and IT consultant, Pardeep Meghwar. That institute offers certification in web designing and development, WordPress customisation, graphics, digital marketing and mobile app development.

She fulfilled her dream in September last year, when the ‘Empower Youth Technical and Vocational Skills Institute Mithi’ opened its doors. It offers a multitude of courses, including on graphic design, web development and programming, as well as English language classes. 

The school includes a computer laboratory, with 16 computers. Devi says she had saved Rs1.2 million over the last couple of years, which she has invested in the institute. 

“For now, we have boys also enrolled in various courses, but we will have classes exclusively for girls once our student strength grows,” she says.

Currently, says Devi, around 50 people are enrolled in various courses. “This includes older people as well, who want to take language classes in order to improve their communication,” she says.

She has hired two trainers while she teaches English and any other course “as the need arises.”

“It’s a great opportunity for us, as digital technology is a basic need of the 21st century,” says Pirah Bajeer, one of Devi’s students. She was enrolled in a course on graphic designing and is currently freelancing.

The young men at her institute are equally grateful for Devi’s trailblazing ways. “I am very grateful to Miss Khatri, as learning from her brought many changes in my personal and professional life,” says Bhanwar Akash who is enrolled at the institute.

Devi says she intends to create an army of girls, from Tharparkar and the rest of Sindh, who are equipped with IT-related skills. “The girls here are far behind in the field of information technology. With a little training, they can try for the millions of opportunities that surface on the internet.”

She adds that one of her students, Faiza Arsalan from Hyderabad, is earning close to USD500 per month from such efforts. “In the next five years, I want to train at least 5,000 girls who earn 50,000 rupees monthly from online work.”

In Tharparkar, says Devi, most girls are limited to household chores: from cleaning homes to washing clothes, and from embroidery to rilli (traditional handmade quilts and bedspreads) work with thread. 

“This happens despite our girls having the potential to excel in skills of the 21st century and to be financially independent in this era of surging inflation,” says Devi. 

Clearly, Devi has a different vision for the future of Thari girls.

The writer is a teacher, and a climate justice and human rights activist based in Mithi. He is on X: @ChandaniDolat

Published in Dawn, EOS, January 28th, 2024