Dwarahat. kiran Rani’s wrinkled face and rough palm disprove her age (30). Hilly region’s tough life and additional financial responsibility made her appearance older for her age. Like kiran, hundreds of women of Almora district have the same tale of their daily travails.
To make two ends meet, these women do not only walk several kilometers to collect firewood from forest but also carry out back breaking farming work to share financial responsibility with their husbands.
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As many male members from Binta village of Almora district work in other parts of the country. Most of them are security personnel while others are in army. Here, families hardly receive money orders in time due to lesser means of transportation and communication. This is the situation even after many years of creation of separate state in the name of development. Moreover, the amount, their husbands send from their paltry salaries, remains in adequate to cope up their families needs.
But, it has been changed. Thanked to an NGO, Suvidha with the help of clean and green technology based company Nvis Technologies organized a three-day training programme to teach these women how to assemble a solar lantern and start its business.
“Livelihood transformation is a complex process. Its needs change in mind set and for this recognition of alternate approach is challenging,” says, E. K. Nareshwar, former directior, Suvidha. Solar lantern assembling is simple and even upper primary school kids can do it, he added.
Explaining about the training, Nvis Technologies, CEO, Uday Bhole, says- “ The place is best suited to harness solar energy. Despite being cold region, it receives a lot of sunlight. We thought solar products would be proved boon for the people of this region. We first trained leaders of self helping groups and subsequently other women of the block.”
In this way, a new avenue of earning has been explored here. These new breed of entrepreneurs have not only became expert in technical aspect of this process from soldering to finishing but also developed marketing skills.
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In an upbeat mood, Sangeeta , a resident, says, ‘ we are in talks with some of the people to find out good market for our product as we want to do business in much planned and systemic manner.
Before this training, we were working as weaver. That needs either a lot of labour or costly machine. Now, we all find lantern assembling is a simple as well as promising source of income.”
Solar lantern has not only brightened up our livelihoods but alsoour houses, those were dark due to erratic electricity supply in the name of power shedding, she added.
About Bhavana Shukla :
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Technically and editorially well versed with all sourcing, scripting and editing requirement to make news and programme capsule. Strong news sense with good oratory skills. Accomplished communications professional with almost a decade of experience in media, ranging from stints in India's leading news dailies to TV news networks. Knowledge of print and digital media.
