Monthly Archives: September 2019

Padma Patnaik

It is estimated by the Government that the cyclone Fani has damaged around 1,159,000 coconut trees in 6,625 hectares of land in Puri district. The worst affected are the major coconut producing areas of Sakhigopal, Brahmagiri, Nimapada, Delang and Pipili, thereby causing the maximum damage to the sector. Example Jaypur village of Satyabadi Block has lost 90 per cent of coconut trees.

Coconut tree loss has affected the coir industries and has become sick without required raw materials. This has also affected the livelihood of many women artisans engaged with the coir industry, artisans’ clusters, especially the Pattachitra Artisans around Chandanpur and coconut coir artisans around Satyabadi.In this context, CYSD team along with “Kala Aur Katha”, led by Pankaja, a designer cum social entrepreneur and SWAD, a local NGO visited the severely affected villages of Satyabadi block with the specific objective to explore the existing potential artisans; assist the artisans in revival of artisans cluster especially coconut products; explore the opportunities on value additions to coconut waste as part of circular economy; and find possibilities of youth led entrepreneurship to generate assured income to minimize distress migration.

After Interaction with women groups and village heads of different villages of Satyabadi block regarding the development and recycling of the coconut waste, it was observed that most of the women groups trained on coir, making various products like doormats, decoration items and flower pots with coconut wastes were limited in design and its attractiveness to generate sustainable livelihood income.

Ground Reality

A team of 14 women members formed a SHG namely, Saraswati Self Help Group in 2007 in Jaypore village of Satyabadi Block. They had started one coir industry engaging women members and was making different coir products. As the industry was running well, the women artisans engaged in it were substituting to their family income in a dignified manner.

“The cyclone FANI has not only blown away the workshop roof, it has taken away the livelihoods of many women engaged in our coir industry”, said Ms. Surekha Dash, the Secretary of SHG.

“Now the group is not able to make any coir products due to shortage of coconut coir & stick. Though marketing is a big issue for us, still we are enthusiastic to revive the coir industry and make coir products to sustain our livelihood”, added Ms. Surekha.

Niladri Sahoo

Foundation for Rural Entrepreneurship Development (FREND), a organisation promoted by Tata Trusts and supported by Google, has been working as a vehicle for other like-minded organizations to leverage the power of the Internet Saathi network for socio-economic development of rural India. This would also enable sustainability for the Internet Saathi network, opening up avenues of economic opportunity for them.

In April 2019, CYSD entered into an agreement with FREND to implement an eight-month Internet Saathi programme with an objective to extend digital literacy knowledge to the rural women in 6 districts of the Odisha State, like Khurda, Puri, Cuttack, Jajpur, Keonjhar and Mayurbhanj.

The programme aims at imparting digital literacy training to more than 1.8 million rural women and helping them understand the benefits of internet. Also, this programme has an agenda to address the digital divide and technology discrimination, specifically, bridge the online gender divide in rural India” The programme would reach 8000 villages in 77 Blocks of these 6 districts through Internet Saathis. For the purpose, the Saathis are equipped with two android cell phones with internet connectivity and modules to learn the programme curriculum. The digital literacy programme will later-on followed with the livelihood enhancement interventions for the Internet Saathis. FREND is monitoring the project implementation with periodic visits to the project locations.

A group of personnel comprising of one State Coordinator, 6 district coordinators, 77 block coordinators and 2286 Internet Saathis are engaged for smooth implementation of the programme. By end of July, the Internet Saathis have trained around 1,43,128 women in six districts