Livelihood Program 2011-12

Experimenting ideas, sharpening skills by dirtying hands and legs, seeing unseen, trying the untried, selling the unsold and many more. These small but yet interesting moved have shaped our livelihood intervention in the year gone by. We genuinely hope that these will help us to be more deliberate in promoting livelihood of the people who are at the periphery of social living due to the extreme exclusion. Following are some of the humble initiatives that NERSWN made this year.

Formation of Farmers’ club: A farmer’s club has been formed comprising 17 Adivashi villagers. The club is being linked with the NABARD. Out of 17 members 10 have been involved with experimenting System of Intensification (SRI). These demo farming is intended towards increasing more numbers of famers to cultivate paddy with SRI Method for better yield and production. Farmers have got better yield with this method. Through the traditional method in that particular village farmers used to produce maximum 8 to 10 mon with SRI method they produced ranging from 12 to 15 mons. With proper and systematic implementation of this method farmers hopes to produce at least 20 mons a bigha.

Promotion of SHGs and their involvement in different Activities: The SHGs formed in the preceding years have been promoted in different activities. Total of 22 SHGs besides savings and credit are involved with different income generating activities such as Mushroom Culture, Pig Rearing and Cultivating Vegetables.

Experimenting & Demonstration of Kitchen Garden: In Jhawarbil area, total of 30 families have been trained on Kitchen Garden concept of vegetable cultivation. Since the families have resettled recently, many of the families could not take the saplings raised in the nursery. Hence, in a plot of community land, vegetables have been culti-vated as demon-stration. The demonstration site produced lot of vegetables. The produces were sold at the market and the money was donated to school management committee. The local Adivashis were really inspired to see the well cultivated vegetables and many of them have promised to start vegetables cultivation from next season.

Improving Women Vendors’ Livelihood: Working with women vendors have become like a logo for NERSWN. It has been couple of years now working with women vendors. In its journey towards bettering the livelihood of women vendors it has crossed many milestones.

Joint Liability Group (JLG) of Women Vendors: The promotion of Joint Liability Group helped the Women Vendors to establish a link with different financial institutions. The JLGs have given much needed leverage for women vendors to access credits from the banks. Total of 36 JLGs are being formed till date with 208 members. Total of 5 JLGs are being credit linked. More numbers of JLGs are expected to receive credits in immediate future.

Capacity Building of women vendors and their dependents:

Women Vendors were given Training on Mushroom culture, detergent making, papad making and kitchen gardening. Total 129 women were trained on candle making. Capacity building was organized mainly for the women vendors, their dependents, SHGs & JLG members and other interested members. The trained members are now empowered to carry out productive activities by themselves.

Sessions for Business Development: The women vendors operate with very tide routine of life. Collecting vegetables, dry fish or other products in the wee hours of the day from farmers and selling it whole day. The similar cycle goes on. They hardly get time to learn and update themselves with the new learning. Hence Business Development sessions were given by involving local NABARD official, bank representative, representative from the development agencies and NGO workers in phase manner on different days.

Improving Livelihood for Empowerment of women vendors: NERSWN team had been observing the improvement of the business as well as their financial condition at home through the different activities viz. Collectivi-zation, Bank and Credit linkage, Advocating for Conducive working space and Exposure visit to other Business Enterprises. These activities help women vendors to know the unknown and to see the unseen leading to increase the level of their self esteem.