Women empowerment is the key to achieve multidimensional, multifaceted, and multi-layered progress in a region. Developing entrepreneurship and making them financially independent are feasible solutions for empowering rural Indian women. Suitable enterprises for women will not only enable them to get better income, but to make them economically self-reliant. Around 80 per cent of the rural population in Jharkhand is dependent on the agricultural sector for their livelihood.
The effective literacy rate in the Census 2011 of Jharkhand was 67.63 per cent with corresponding figures for males and females being 78.45 and 56.21, respectively. Moreover, at least 10 districts were below 50 per cent. It is estimated that 56 per cent of women, aged 15 to 24, are neither engaged in education, nor training or employment. Due to lack of female education, it is estimated that beyond schooling, only 8 per cent of girls participate in some kind of training and only 0.1 per cent secure a vocational training diploma. The state has low level of success in creating women-based social entrepreneurship due to various reasons. Firstly, lack of education has been a major barrier. Secondly, there is a shortage of supportive ecosystems that can help women to become social entrepreneurs. Most community-based organisations and civil society organisations (CSO), working on a right-based approach, focus on getting employment instead of instilling a sense of entrepreneurship.
The Girl Power project aims at capacity development of women beneficiaries turned entrepreneurs to contribute towards the benefit and well-being of their families. It tries to enhance the purchasing power, decision making, and dignity of women. The project strongly believes in the transformative approach for economic empowerment in new market conditions, while empowering women to adopt differential roles and internalise and manage the competition in the market. It is imperative to realise that training and handholding in women’s microenterprise promotion would need to address life-cycle issues that are cross-cutting along a spectrum of women’s market engagement because they affect women’s confidence and motivation, ultimately impacting sustainability of women’s empowerment through enterprise. It is necessary for gender sensitive-responsive women enterprise promotion. To promote social entrepreneurship among women and girls, CSOs may act as catalyst. Therefore, strengthening the ability of Indian civil society and its organisations to perform their role as independent agents of change, implementing actions that bring transformative change into the lives of women and girls is imperative. One of the distinctive components of the Girl Power Project which is funded by the European Union and implemented by All India Institute of Local Self Government in Jharkhand is capacitating the CSOs. Improvement and recognition of their work in the local area of operation related to skill building for women and girls will have more impact on women empowerment. This project will create a network of CSOs and women, which will act as a support base for fostering rights to women and girls in Jharkhand, specifically to create women social entrepreneurship. Further, likeminded network of CSOs and women social entrepreneurs will be helpful in order to foster a positive support base for women social entrepreneurs. The project aims to establish 1000 women and girl entrepreneurs through support centres to be established in CSOs’ area of work. They will be pioneers for the entrepreneurial activities in their districts.
To achieve the objective, the project team has established Jharkhand Mahila Social Entrepreneurship Market Connect (JMSEMC) in Upper Bazar, Ranchi, which was inaugurated by Ravi Ranjan Guru, Deputy Director General, AIILSG Delhi. JMSEMC office will act as an innovative nodal centre and a single point window for women and CSOs across the state to connect with the prospective buyers. It will serve as an information hub for all buyers, sellers, stakeholders, and all concerned department authorities. Further, JMSEMC will work towards providing end to end services to the women entrepreneurs in the supply chain of the products. Following are
its features:
Information & Knowledge Centre: JMSEMC will have a knowledge base on the technical aspects of the product as well as information related to expansion, financial and registration of enterprises.
Training & Certifications: For building skills, various courses will be offered in which women can get enrolled. Assistance in product certifications will also be worked at JMSEMC.
Pool of entrepreneurs: Each entrepreneur will have a separate profile of their enterprises and the services they can offer. This will be an open source which can be accessed by anyone.
Forward Linkage: The major aim of JMSEMC is to outreach the potential products to its customers. The entrepreneurs will be brought under one umbrella through creation of a brand and promoting the brand. Vendor identification will be done for the potential products, and the database will be prepared for the same.
Employment Generation: Building skills of women will open the gateway towards the new opportunities for them as a result engaging themselves in any kind of entrepreneurial/ job activities hence generating employment.
On February 21, 2022, a meeting with the CSOs/ service providers was organised at Vishweshvaraiya Institute of Sanitation and Water Academy (VISWA) in presence of Pashim Tewari, Technical Director, AIILSG Delhi and Dr R.K Gupta, Project Director, Girl Power Project. Several activities which include capacity building training of beneficiaries were discussed with the CSOs. Anita Hembrom, Secretary, Caring and Sharing Foundation; S N Singh, Secretary, Center for Entrepreneurship; and Neelam Besra, Secretary, Jharkhand Mahila Utthan shared the challenges that the women and girls are facing on field, and how the women entrepreneurs already involved in production of particular product are unable to sell the products in time due to lack of proper marketing strategies. Pashim Tewari also suggested that women can form cooperative in order to sell their products under one brand.
Training of the identified products will be provided to the women beneficiaries after which the products prepared by the women entrepreneurs will be displayed on the web portal developed by the team to help in marketing of the products. The web portal to undertake three tasks:
E-commerce platform: where all the finished products of different nature developed by women entrepreneurs will be displayed
Certification course: Women and girls of the state can enrol for specific courses
Job portal: It will contain the database of women trained for manufacturing various products
The Girl Power team will also explore online platforms like Amazon and Flipkart for marketing of products prepared by women beneficiaries/entrepreneurs so that there is no geographical barrier and restrictions in selling their marketable products. CSO members will also share the fast marketing strategy in detail with women beneficiaries as some of the products may have high risk as they are perishable in nature like mushroom, vegetables while some have low risk and are long lasting like lac and bamboo products. Also, they will be sharing the pricing strategy criteria, packaging, and branding and profit percentage to sell products in the market.
The women beneficiaries will be prepared in such a way that they should be capable of supplying the products regularly to the customers so that the buyer’s interest will not shift to
other sellers.