INSTITUTE FOR RURAL AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT,MANDYA
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Income and basic needs in Mandya. Vikasana and Poverty Alleviation Existing project: Beedi makers. What we want to help Vikasana to do for poor rural women in Mandya | Here's the deal. Take people from mud and thatched huts and put them into modern housing. In order for them to pay off their housing, provide them with jobs; to get jobs, they need training. This is the village shop, one of the most modern buildings in the village near Manya where the Vikasana workers live. It actually has concrete walls. However, there's no running water, only the most rudimentary electric supply and no shower or toilet to speak of. Water comes in drums or buckets carried by human or animal labour. About 60% of Indians live in conditions like this. They're the lucky ones - they actually have a place to call home. There are over 50 million Indians who are homeless.
Marion met Guru quite by chance - she was on the wrong train during a trip to the Mysore silk academy. Guru invited Marion and her travelling companion Anne to visit the textiles training centre operated by Vikasana. (Click here to read the profile of Vikasana) Marion decided that Beautiful Silks and Elephant Concepts could do something to help Vikasana. We decided to supply training in production skills for their workers and business skills for their management. Here's a letter from the Director of Vikasana to us, just before we left to join them in October 2008. It sets out just a fraction of what they wanted us to do. Dear Marion, After all these preparatory works we started micro finance,micro enterprise activities. we are not good in market network.we are facing problems in marketing our SHG product. we need help. Our textile women need to learn new things so that they can sell to global market.
You know till 2000 Rural india sanitation coverage is only 2%.Than Govt of india has started total sanitation campaign,now it is incresed and about 23% of rural india has village latrines but the availibility of pure drinking water is still a problem in many villages. Our govt is spending lot of money on it.we may demonstrate it.if it is cheaper and accept in local,let promote it by our govt. We are pleased that you will help us to be innovating many things to do here.i gone through composting toilet and it is very interesting! We may demonstrate it in a village called Singapura. we are experimenting organic farming in full village since two years.we are planning it to make a module for sustainable village development.now all the farmers adopting organic farming techniques. everyday morning i have a practice of doing worship god for ten to twenty minutes.by that time along with myfamily,friends,institution,our self-help-group families i am also praying for both of you of good health,wealth,peace and success. i wondering your super energy and great spirit.i am also trying to understand your personality from your one mail to another. your concern,stand,vision,humbelness,hard work,ambitiousness,convincing nature confidence.... what a great! God given me a special super friend.i am also learning many things from you.we will travell together and work together. thanking you,
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Obviously they had a lot of faith in us! Marion organised a tour group of textile artists who wanted to participate in training workshops with the many Indian women who'd been selected by Vikasana for training in working with silk industry waste by-products: the WASTE TO WEALTH project. 13 textile artists and a businessman joined our two tutors, India Flint and Nalda Searles... the fees they paid covered the expenses of these world-class tutors, as well as providing a truly wonderful travel experience and a major donation to Vikasana... enough to build the training centre which Marion opened. Marion and I spent two weeks working after that... interfacing a village-level program with an international supply chain. I taught 5 small business classes and worked with local artisans in preparing business and marketing plans. As a result of our co-operation, Vikasana supplies a world-wide fair trade market with items required by western consumers. It’s a good social partnership between our business (www. beautifulsilks.com) and theirs. They put on a HUGE opening ceremony for us, Marion had to cut the ribbon to open the building...the minister was there, someone from the industries department, and the co-operative development bank... and of course our hundred-strong workforce and many of their children who'd taken the day off school for the opening festival. During the ceremony, the spiritual leader explained to the workers that our business plan meant that Vikasana would be the first self-help scheme on the planet to marry up a Grameen-style bank to an export marketing system, powered by its own training division and operating its e-commerce site. Profits go firstly to train workers and to employ them, then to provide additional training facilities and finally to subsidise the housing they can earn with their oncreased wages. Big call, but three months later, we've built one. This is at the end when most everyone else had gone to get lunch and I'd just been awarded my Ph.D. (as a result of the work I've done for them, based on my thesis- click here to download the thesis in parts:(without footnotes) part B part C ) That's the rolled up parchment on the table in front of me, with the flowers.  And then I KNEW they had faith in us. |
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