After an immensely successful video conference-based inauguration on September 15, in the presence of Badal Patralekh, Minister of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry, Government of Jharkhand, the Girl Power project has regained the post-COVID lockdown momentum. Launching the project on a virtual platform brought together an important solidarity among the teams, who are unable to meet in conferences physically due to COVID-19 restrictions.
Nevertheless, across India, coronavirus lockdown regulations are relaxing; one might say the country is experiencing relief mixed with apprehension and fear. Travel has opened up and in Jharkhand, the Girl Power project’s partner Saunta Gaunta Foundation (SGF) began executing a baseline survey. Other team members are working actively to investigate the appropriate training modules to promote women’s entrepreneurship in Jharkhand.
Prior to establishing a strategy for any project, there has to be an understanding of the present conditions. To achieve that, the Girl Power project, funded by the European Union and led by AIILSG, Saunta Gaunta Foundation (SGF), Magan Sanghralaya Samiti (MSS) and Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Rural Industrialization (MGIRI), designed a baseline survey questionnaire targeting 5,000 women in the state of Jharkhand.
Wisely, SGF has chosen to train women to execute the survey, as the respondents are also women. Our field partner staff, Sebastian Soren, has been the lead trainer for the baseline survey of the community resource persons (CRPs) of 20 civil society organizations (CSOs) in 10 districts of Jharkhand. We have come a long way from where we started when the CRPs were struggling to download the app due to network problems, and now in mid-October when we have surveyed almost 1,500 women across the project area.
Women are leading this baseline survey, as both surveyors and respondents. The information will be captured across the 10 Girl Power districts in Jharkhand that promise to reveal great insight into the potential for entrepreneurship among women in this region.
All of us are heavily dependent upon technology, especially during this time of fear in the midst of a pandemic. Partner meetings happen on video conference and the twenty CSOs involved in the project are engaged primarily through mobile phones and laptops. Each CSO is given a Google Form to fill information about women entrepreneurs and policymakers in their district. Whatsapp is the primary method for communicating information.
Similarly, the female surveyors are using mobile phones to upload data for the survey, through a software that is completely free to the public. Though it has been a long time now since IT has been hailed as a method for improving rural livelihoods, there is no shortage of new innovations and new applications of the technologies. It remains to be seen how these surveys are uploaded and the kind of technical issues that may take place in the future.
In addition to the collection of information about women producers and entrepreneurs in Jharkhand, the Girl Power team is also encouraging CSO partners to meet with various government officials in their areas. The meetings are taking place with full precautions and are proving to be a great way for the CSOs to get to know local officials and understand the kind of schemes available for women entrepreneurship in Jharkhand.
Harnessing policymakers is an important sub-activity of the entire Girl Power project. There are various government schemes listed online to promote entrepreneurship, such as the Jharkhand State Livelihoods Promotion Society (JSLPS) of the State Rural Livelihood Mission, Skill Mission India, Startup India, Deen Dayal Upadhyay Grameen Kaushalya Yojana, and perhaps many more. Understanding which are active and can be harnessed by the Girl Power project is the purpose of the meetings with the government.
While we seek to harness the government policies and schemes, we are also in the process of determining the actual requirements of the women of Jharkhand. Through the baseline survey, some in-house knowledge has developed on the kinds of products that can be harnessed for up-skilling and entrepreneurship. Bamboo handicraft, for instance, is commonly known by women in districts across Jharkhand, however, there is great potential for upgrading the handicraft skill through techniques and processing methods.
Women are locally producing baskets and other items and selling on a small scale, yet it remains to be seen what the nature of the training module that the Girl Power partners will develop to bring their products to a wider market will be. Various retailers of women’s products have been identified by the Girl Power Market Connect team in Jharkhand, such as Jharcraft, Kusum Jharlac Emporium, Tribe Tree, Viponi, the Tribal Cooperative Marketing Development Federation of India (TRIFED), Shilpkaari and Chotanagpur Craft Development Society. Our hope is, in the long run, that Girl Power beneficiaries’ products can reach the showrooms of these various handicraft shops. The Girl Power project has an ambitious goal: establish 1,000 women entrepreneurs across Jharkhand. However, the project is set up to sequentially achieve this: first, through capacity building of CSOs who work with women, second, by creating a network of CSOs to pass along information, third, to train women on relevant skills with the help of the CSO network. Once women have received these trainings and upgraded their skills or learned new technologies, such as button mushroom cultivation, bamboo handicraft, lac jewellery production or medicinal plant processing by moving sequentially through the activities, while also developing partnerships with the government, the project team members will slowly understand how this connection to the market will
take place.
“The theme of this project is partnerships,” said Pashim Tiwari, Technical Director, AIILSG. Developing partnerships in the field with 20 CSOs with the guidance of four esteemed and experienced non-governmental organizations (NGOs), AIILSG, MSS, MGIRI and SGF. Our greatest and most important challenge is to reduce barriers to communication among all the partners and ensure that the information, training modules or market access becomes available to a wide network of CSOs, SHGs and women entrepreneurs in Jharkhand.