Rekha Verma – 40 Years,  is a key artisan member and one of the promoter of Lac Art & Craft Group, an associated producer partner of Manjeen Handicrafts since 2011. Her responsibilities vary from keeping record for raw material to evolving new design patterns in association of Manjeen’s design team.

Rekha is an enthusiast individual with humility, she is a vivid learner with ample sense of responsibility & commitment. The character gives her an edge over her peer group to be a leader with dedication and equality. Although her education is limited to elementary level, but it is never being a hindrance in her confidence and enthusiasm.

She belongs to a community / family of silversmith from Shahjahanpur, Utterpardesh – 400kms towards East of Delhi. Within family she was introduced with the skill of Jewelry craft at the early age of 13. She helped her parents and family in production and simultaneously learning the skill. During those years’ girls were restricted to go out after reaching puberty and schools were discontinued.

Rekha was married at the early age of 17 to Deelip Verma from the same community. She very well recalls about the days when the family was losing their livelihood due to price rise of silver. It was very difficult for them to develop a range of products with limited and small capital. This situation leading them to migrate from their native town to Loni, a bordering town to Delhi on its eastern fringes. The opportunities were not easy to come at the new destination, they started with their skillful work with a very limited investment on 100 gms of silver and made silver finger rings. It was a different kind of product but they remained dependent on big shops, the shop pays 50% on second delivery This kept them in situation of hand to mouth and later the situation deteriorated as payment started getting delays and profit remained non exist, not even equals to daily wages, they came up with an idea of applying the same technique on brass copper as base metal, during the period they got introduced to Manjeen, as Manjeen works with Brass / Copper jewelry artisans, the association and partnership grew stronger by structuring the group in their locality and a group was formed as an extended family workshop, gradually women from outside family was inducted into the group as artisans after training . Rekha is moderator for Manjeen to impart training for chips decoration on jewelry and other decorative products to women as an opportunity for livelihood.

Last year she married off her eldest daughter at the age of 21years. Her second daughter is 17 years a student of class XI while her third daughter is 9 years and a primary school student. Her son is 20 years and appeared in class XII annual exam awaiting his results with planning for further education.
Rekha attributes her quality of life to Fairtrade, as it is not restricted to an economic liberation for her and other artisans. Since working under guidance of Fairtrade, the family began to earn a fair profit margin, enabling them to make savings after meeting household expenditures. The savings helped suitably to meet their daughter marriage expenses. Now she is concentrating to save for children’s further education.