Empowering the powerless: Reaching out to the less fortunate rural women

EMPOWERING THE POWERLESS
Reaching the less fortunate rural women
By Suresh Britto
Theme :
Empowering the powerless
Mission statement:
Extending our hand to the unknown, weak, rural WOMEN and empowering them socially, educationally, morally, ethically and financially in order to be part of the just society.
Niche:
Reaching the less fortunate rural women
Promotion plan:
St. John’s Catholic Church, Nagar, Nashik is run and administered by the Diocese of Nashik. Besides the religious, spiritual, and sacramental nurturing and caring, the community dedicates her services to serve needy brothers and sisters of neighbouring villages. This year being “International Women Year” the community wants to help out emotionally oppressed, educationally illiterate, financially dependent and socially subjugated women in order to bring them to the common fold of society.
Objective statement:
To increase household income, reduce malnutrition in children and improve living conditions in rural and isolated rural communities, cut off from their sources of employment and social services, through the empowerment of women as wage-earners and the creation of jobs
Specific Objectives:
(a) To provide women with vocational training in tailoring and dairy-farming and managerial and technical capacity building to enable them to run a business.
(b) To provide women with basic equipment to start a job and support them to become organised in community-based working units to effectively manage and run their businesses.
(c) To establish women’s associations in tailoring and dairy-farming to represent women’s interests, provide them with technical, administrative and logistical support and promote their products in the formal market.
(d) To provide women basic formal education and make them literate.
(e) To make them self reliant through SELF HELP GROUPS.
Planning and Launching of Operation Activities
1. Presentation of the operation to targeted communities
A series of meetings with direct and indirect beneficiaries will be conducted at community level. At the very beginning of the project - preparation stage- SJCC would hire very experienced staff to carry out field visits and meet with direct and indirect beneficiaries in the field. The Project Manager, together with other SJCC staff, would conduct meetings with local councils, community-based organizations, women’s centres, community leaders, and women activists. The field meetings with beneficiaries will be designed so as to survey and target each village in the cluster in order to present the idea of the project and involve local communities in the process of selecting participants according to the criteria identified in the project. During such meetings, beneficiaries will be offered complete information about the project’s goals and objective. Moreover, such meetings will strengthen the cooperation with governmental bodies like the Ministry of Local Authorities. We hope to get support for the project’s contribution to poverty reduction and the generation of income for needy families.
2. Establishment of a team of trainers:
SJCC has contracted 49 trainers Negotiations with the trainers initially took place over telephone addressing the training subjects, the duration of the training and the terms of reference that were earlier sent out to them. Taking into consideration that a few number of professional trainers are available for this kind of training, the 49 trainers were contracted. The trainers are recruited from the locality and nearby localities as language and acquaintance are very necessary in the rural marketing.
No.
Place
No. of Trainers
Job assigned
Total days/hours
Days/hours assigned
Payment
01
Shevgaon
03 Trainers
05 Trainers
02 Trainers
Dairy Training
Tailoring Training
Literacy programme
40 hours
90 days
120 days
05 hours
30 Days
60 Days
50/- per hour
5000/- per month
4000/- per month
02
Haregaon
03 Trainers
02 Trainers
Dairy Training
Literacy programme
40 hours
120 days
05 hours
60 Days
50/- per hour
4000/- per month
03
Rahata
03 Trainers
05 Trainers
02 Trainers
Dairy Training
Tailoring Training
Literacy programme
40 hours
90 days
120 days
05 hours
30 Days
60 Days
50/- per hour
5000/- per month
4000/- per month
04
Kedgaon
05 Trainers
02 Trainers
Tailoring Training
Literacy programme
90 days
120 days
30 Days
60 Days
5000/- per month
4000/- per month
05
Nagar
05 Trainers
02 Trainers
Tailoring Training
Literacy programme
90 days
120 days
30 Days
60 Days
5000/- per month
4000/- per month
06
Khirwadi
03 Trainers
02 Trainers
Dairy Training
Literacy programme
40 hours
120 days
05 hours
60 Days
50/- per hour
4000/- per month
07
Songaon
03 Trainers
05 Trainers
02 Trainers
Dairy Training
Tailoring Training
Literacy programme
40 hours
90 days
120 days
05 hours
30 Days
60 Days
50/- per hour
5000/- per month
4000/- per month
3. Marketing communication
(a) Street Plays : Since the target group is illiterate and rural based, dramatization of the project is very much important. Thus the trainers/animators would spend two months prior to the actual commencement of the project programme to dramatize and bring awareness about the self-reliance, importance of education, cooperative spirit etc.
(b) Banners : The banner will be put up in each sub-village, chwak, market place etc. Banners are put up at Pipal Tree as many people gather to relax, rest, and also discuss common issues.
(c) Door to door awareness : The Animators already have been going for survey for the detail report of target group. They are also instructed to talk to the women about the forthcoming project.
(d) Organizing Bhajan Programme : It is noticed that women go for Bhajan Bhaithak (Gathering of people to praise God) every day. Thus a few new songs with attractive lyrics depicting the awareness would be taught.
Training courses
1. Vocational training in tailoring, dairy-farming, and literacy programme in the year 2012
According to the realised plan of action, “Training courses preparation” would be at the end of March instead of February as originally scheduled in the proposal.
According to “Training courses implementation”:
a. Tailoring Courses
The implementation will commence on May instead of March as was initially scheduled in the proposal. The delay is because of women’s unavailability during month of March and April. It is learnt that during this time women are busy in collecting wood for rainy season, getting field ready for paddy sowing and cultivation etc. The next period will be from 15th July to 15th September as during these time women are usually free after paddy cultivation.
b. Dairy-Farming Courses
The implementation commences on March instead of April as was originally scheduled in the proposal. Eight days of training must help them to get into small scale businesses.
c. Literacy Programme
The literacy programme begins on 1st March. It scheduled in the evening at 9.00pm. This period is identified as the best because women can be free after their kitchen and cleaning work. The programme is stretched out for four continuous months
2. Training stage During this interim period, project staff expected to succeed in delivering 17 training courses in seven clusters. According to the project’s work plan, training courses in all the villages run in parallel. Each training course should last training hours mentioned above. After the evaluation of the first training round of all the three programmes in all the units participants and trainers will be requested to see whether there is more or less time required. The training period will be extended as per the proposal made by project staff, trainers and participants. If the period is satisfactory training hours will remain as identified in the project.
Although training subjects are mainly based on topics included in the training curricula, trainers are asked to develop more training materials based on the reflection of reality and the training needs emerging through implementation. These materials will be considered as part of training curricula.
Results of Activities
1. Implementation of Training Courses
800 Participants will be exposed to training techniques mainly designed to develop their skills and performance in Tailoring and Dairy farming. Training topics set out to meet their training needs and to overcome their difficulties. The training is comprehensive and includes all necessary topics in the mentioned subjects.
After sewing training, women would be able to sew clothes for themselves and their families. Others would manage to sew clothes for their community.
250 participants will be exposed to Dairy farming training. The course aims of complete knowledge and building confidence to take up dairy farming as profession.
1300 women are expected to shun their illiteracy blanket and would able to read, write, and speak Marathi effectively. The training would also give them knowledge about bank transaction, loan details, manufacturing and expiry dates of a product etc.
2. Establishment of committees of five participants (Women’s Association)
A committee of five participants who would actively involved in training programme will be elected at the end of the training. These five participants, who represent their villages, are expected to take part in the coming project activities and, as active members of the general assembly of the, women’s associations are planned to be established by the end of the project. Project staff would conduct a series of meetings with the committees to clarify their roles in future project activities with SJCC. They will take part in capacity building training in the field of management, networking, marketing and fundraising. They will be the members of women associations to organize women and to identify their priorities and meet their needs.
3. Dissemination of machines
After training courses women who take part in the tailoring training will be given sewing machines to enable them generate incomes. 800 sewing machines will be distributed for women who would have participated in the tailoring training. As for dairy part women association will be provided by a milk truck to market their dairy products, each woman will receive milk reservation containers to ensure healthy milk, refrigerators and milk testing devices.

Expected Results (a) Targeted women have developed skills in tailoring and dairy-farming matching standards to satisfy market demands, as well as managerial and technical capacities to run a business
(b) Targeted women have been provided with equipment and, organised in community-based working units which cover all fields of production and marketing, are able to effectively manage their businesses;
(c) Seven women’s associations have been established and have taken over the overall management of the working units representing their interests, offering them technical and administrative support and marketing their products;
(d) Businesses have been established, are sustainable and generate a basic income for the families of the beneficiaries.
(e) Targeted women have learnt basics of education and are able to read, write, and speak.
(f) Targeted women also take up a new challenge to ensure that many more women come under the umbrella of literacy.