Girl Power Project
Spreading awareness on gender issues on International Women’s Day Team girl power project
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one-day training/ orientation program was organised on International Women’s day for 20 partner CSOs from 10 districts, orienting them on the Girl Power Project and briefing about the importance of soft skills in entrepreneurship. A total of 40 participants were present in the programme. The discussion started with the role of women in different trades and services & how the project visions to empower women as entrepreneurs. Three stages of the project were described which would lead to meeting the larger goal of the project; identification of CSOs and skilling them to meet the requirements, marketing of products manufactured by entrepreneurs, and their linkage with government & financial schemes.
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April 2021 | www.urbanupdate.in
The project aims at the sustainability approach, wherein systems have been developed and are in a place to support women entrepreneurs. During the training, best practices were shared by some of the CSO partners on the work they have been doing. Usha Devi of Jharkhand Mahila Uthaan shared how they saw an opportunity during COVID-19 lockdown to start their social enterprise of making sanitary pads and how the enterprise is running successfully at present. Anita Hembram, Director of Caring and Sharing Foundation, East Singbhum shared on how mushroom was identified as a potential product. She continued to mention the market study that led to the identified the value chain of the product, where it was seen that at regional level the demand is very high but with the large distance to the market it was difficult to market it. Therefore, aggregation centres were opened at village level; a model
was developed and was implemented in other villages too. As a result, a mushroom cluster is created which has impacted the income of the households. Girl Power carried out a baseline study of 5000 women to assess the livelihoods of the 10 districts of Jharkhand. The study also aimed to identify and explore the availability of raw materials, potential for entrepreneurship, current entrepreneurial activities & market access and environmental sustainability. The data collection was conducted during November 2020 to March 2021. Training for baseline survey was conducted in three districts of Jharkhand: Dumka, Deoghar & Saraikela. For collection of data, the KoBo Collect software has been used. Training was conducted before baseline study on how to collect data through KoBo Collect. A total 24 community resource persons were trained on app-based baseline
