Girl Power Project trains women in soft skills

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. 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 data collection, KoBo Collect. Similar training has also been conducted in seven districts. So far 121 CRPs have been trained, who are now familiar with data collection, using mobile app-based technology.
Training program was conducted in each block where the importance of data collection, use of technology in data collection was focused upon. One day practical was also organised for the field staff to get acquainted with the new technology for data collection. Orientation on questionnaire was given to Community Resource Persons who are engaged for collection of data. Importance of each question was discussed.
The baseline survey was carried out with 5000 women in 10 districts of Jharkhand covering 20 blocks in all zones. There are four divisons in the state of Jharkhand namely North Chotanagpur, South Chotanagpur, Kolhan& Santhal Pargana. The districts have been finalized on the basis of following parameters:

Presence of marginalized groups
Equally dispersed across the major zones of the state
Presence of supporting institutions
Market Networks
Women Entrepreneurs
Strong grassroots institutions

For collection of data, KoBo Collect software has been used. KoBoCollect is an Android app that is used in survey-based data gathering. It supports a wide range of question and answers types, and is designed to work well without network connectivity. KoBo Collect renders forms into a sequence of input prompts. Users work through the prompts and can save the submission at any point. Finalized submissions can be sent to a server. Collect supports location, audio, images, video, barcodes, signatures, multiple-choice, free text, and numeric answers.