6000 RURAL & TRIBAL WOMEN JOIN “SAKHI”

Hindustan Zinc campaign “SAKHI” developing Rural Women as Entrepreneurs

It is said, when you empower a rural and tribal women, you in-turn make a complete family socially and economically independent, thereby energizing the whole village and ultimately contributing towards the progress of a nation.

The rural women in India have been proving their mettle and strength in every sphere of life; be it house-hold work, agriculture, traditional crafts or liberal arts, rural women of India have always been in forefront and have even dominated the global fashion industry with their creativity and understanding of traditional art & craft skills. These rural and tribal women are now more confident and determined to manage their finances through banks while educating their children and supporting families.

Hindustan Zinc, a Sesa-Sterlite Limited company in zinc, lead, silver and wind-energy business, realized the potential of these women and decided to engage with them in different interest areas that are also feasible for them.

The company started a campaign to bring social and economic empowerment amongst these rural and tribal women, particularly those who were residing near its business locations in Rajasthan. The initiative aimed at bringing about 10-15 women of similar creative minds, behaviour and temperament under a single platform of ‘Self-Help-Group’. Once part of the group these women are groomed through intensive vocational training that includes tailoring, stitching, tie and dye, meenakari, terracotta, embroidery, artificial jewellery making, beautician,  home-furnishing etc. Adult education camps are also organized to make these women literate.

Eventually, these rural and tribal women have come up as rural women entrepreneur. 

Hindustan Zinc recently launched a national campaign “SAKHI” that recognizes the success of these rural and tribal women and has brought together these more than 6,000 rural and tribal women of Rajasthan and weaved them into about 475 “SAKHI” self-help-groups to make them as Rural Women Entrepreneurs.

The rural system has its own customs and traditions but the biggest has been the social system. It was never easy to convince these women towards joining the “SAKHI” self-help-groups and spare about 4-5 hours almost daily for learning different vocational traits. The support of family members was imperative and to convince the family was a challenging task. Hindustan Zinc’s CSR representatives spent hours together to convince the families and make them understand the socio-economic empowerment “SAKHI” initiative will eventually bring.

“SAKHI” campaign has given Hindustan Zinc a unique opportunity and edge to further scale-up and strengthen self-help-groups and encourage millions of other rural and tribal women to come forward towards their socio-economic empowerment.

The campaign has been launched through a blog www.vedantasakhi.blogspot.in, which uploads the success stories of these women and other important information/extracts of reports. The other platform, Facebook www.facebook.com/vedantasakhi is a knowledge sharing platform and promotes the cause by organizing discussions and deliberations. 

"SAKHI" has brought these women under a single umbrella as a collective force. Now they have started sharing their experience, knowledge, vocational traits, which has also considerably improved their communication skills.  Most of these women have bank accounts and they manage them independently. The “SAKHI” self-help-groups also have a market coordinator who on their behalf negotiates the prices of their products in the market and generates orders.

The objective of “SAKHI” is also to impart trainings to these women in other professional streams, strengthen vendors base and suppliers base, bringing market competitiveness, ensure finishing & quality output, and eventually enhance their social & economic status by improving monthly returns.

Recently, “SAKHI” organized its first interactive workshop that saw participation by over 350 rural and tribal women entrepreneurs from Rajsamand, Chittorgarh, Bhilwara, Ajmer and Udaipur districts’ self-help-groups.

Prof. Anuja Sisodia from Indian Institute of Crafts and Design, Jaipur took the workshop that gave these women an insight on designing, colour combination, finishing & quality checks, customer analysis, and market trends.  The workshop also had interactive sessions on garments and home-furnishing market, development of handicraft industry, production as per current fashion trends and pricing of the products. These rural women also expressed their concerns about the availability of raw material, need for upgraded training programs and new markets for selling the products. Hindustan Zinc has taken the responsibility to strengthen the market linkages on behalf of these women.

Each “SAKHI” (as these women entrepreneurs are addressed) has a success story to narrate and every success story gives birth to hundreds of more success stories. “SAKHI” is a voice of these rural and tribal women and the campaign is destined to improve their social and economic life.