Kalakosh decides to party!

On 3rd March, Sandeep was celebrating his birthday party and we made that an occasion to display some of our products amongst our friends. It was a great evening with great people! We received some really positive feedback on our ideas, our products, our website.

Its always good to hear people appreciate the things we've done well, but its even better to get tips and advice on how to do better. Needless to say, we know this is just the start and there is a long way to go and we have a big learning curve ahead of us. But we'll keep marching on.

Last, but not the least, a BIG THANK YOU to:
-- our hosts, Meeta and Sanket, who were very generous and gracious in their hospitality
-- to Maike, for putting together a really cool product display in literally two minutes and for giving a helping hand on quite a few other things
-- to all people for sharing some great moments with us, for the big smiles, and for buying our products, for your encouragement, and your support

Below are some memories from the evening ...some more on our Facebook page! (photo credits: Meeta & Sanket)

Signing off for now,
Paritosh

Our Journal Collection

Our Basket Display - Thank You, Maike!

Talking about the Old School Sketchbook with Yosuke

Kasturi was all smiles today!

... and so were the others! We cherish those the most! Thank you for your support!

Not to forget...the birthday boy! I believe he was the happiest of the lot!

Rural Women Empowerment: My Impressions - Part II

After spending a week with WELLpaper's women self help groups near Pondicherry, I travelled to the southern tip of India, Kanyakumari to visit the NGO CHARDEP.

CHARDEP is based in the town Nagercoil, which is about 2o km north of Kanyakumari. It is run by the very dedicated, highly motivated and down-to-earth Mr. Manikandan and his team. They have several following programs which include Annapoorna Yatra, where they provide a daily meal for the homeless in the region. Another program is the HIV/AIDS treatment center, where they have a small clinic to provide regular treatment for HIV infected people. They also have women empowerment programs, which was the my main reason for my visit to Nagercoil.

Currently there are about 1500 self-help groups (SHGs), which are supported/mentored by CHARDEP. CHARDEP makes sure that they get credit from the local bank using their resources as guarantee, they distribute the money and make sure that the money is paid back to the bank in time. All of these self-help groups are coordinated by an outstanding woman Mrs. Mary, who does not have any formal education but knows how to manages about 10,000 men and women from the villages. As a mentor and as a friend, she connects outstandingly well with the women in the SHGs.

The first SHG we visited is in a village reached driving from Kanyakumari to Nagercoil. The women there are making stripes out of palm tree leaves, which are then later used in making hats. It was an amazing sight to see about 15 women sitting under a tree on a sunny day laughing, talking and at the same working on the palm leaves. The working hours there are flexible as the women need to take care of their household chores, thereforce most of the women work about 4 to 6 hours daily. In addition to earning money for their livelihood, they are happy just being part of the group creating something good out of the locally available resources.

Women working under a tree

Stripes made out of palm tree leaves

The next SHG we visited is in another village which is about 10 km from the first village. As the entire region is full of palm trees, the second SHG is also working with palm tree leaves. They get the palm tree leaves, cut them in half and wave them to make a sheet/slab which is used as a construction material for a roof of a hut or a fencing wall. Different in this SHG is the fact that some of the women are entrepreneurs. They lease the palm trees yearly, so that they have the much needed raw material and rest of the byproducts they can sell locally.

The working hours are flexible in in this SHG as well, women work whenever they have time during the day. Some of the women I spoke to are using the income in sending their children to better schools and colleges. One of the woman was very proud that she could send her son to a technical college in nearby town.

Women explaining to us about their work (note palm leave sheets which are used as mats)

Women who was skillfully cutting the palm leave into two (I was astonished to see the precision of her work)

In both the SHGs, I was happy to see that given a chance women can make a great impact in the society and bring the much needed socio-economic transformation in rural india.

Rural Women Empowerment: My Impressions - Part I

Recently I had the opportunity to visit some women’s self-help groups (SHGs) in India. Which was of course a great experience to see the the impacts of SHGs for women in rural India. Here are some of my notes and experiences from my visit.

Wellpaper:
In our online shop Kalakosh, the beautiful baskets out of old newspapers ("The Hindu"), are handmade by the women SHG of Wellpaper. WELL is the abbreviation of "Women Empowerment through Local Livelihood". Wellpaper was initiated in 2005 as a tsunami-relief effort to provide an alternative source of livelihood to the tsunami affected families in the region as well as to promote products made of recycled materials. Currently there are about 20 women divided into three groups working with Wellpaper. Wellpaper gives the orders to the groups and they also ensure that the groups have work around the year.

The groups act highly autonomously and the women are given the freedom to plan and to divide the production themselves. This include the planning, estimation of raw materials needed, ordering of raw materials and the division of the labour to make sure the products are finished on time. Before the women deliver the products to Wellpaper they then conduct a final quality check to ensure that no defective products are present. Although almost none of the woman have any formal education, their highly impressive product life cycle and their managing of the production is nothing less than a high quality formal production unit to be very proud of!

The women in the groups are treated equally and decisions are taken in a democratic way. Each woman has a role to fulfil and they are proud of creating these unique and beautiful products with their skills! Visiting the women of Wellpaper every day for one week, I was taken in with this place full of these energetic and fun-loving women taking pride in their work.

Unfortunately, during my stay at Wellpaper the very strong Cyclone Thane devastated the entire region causing damages to most of the houses. The day after the cyclone hit the region, I was quite surprised to see that the women were back to work and they were laughing and having fun as usual, even though some of them got their houses damaged. It is very inspiring to see the resilience and the inner strength of these women.

Some visual impressions from my visit:

Aftermath of the cyclone - the damage is visible

Widespread destruction of infrastructure - many were left without electricity for days

Usha with a paper basket in the initial stages

Poorna here is working on the base of a basket

Work being done on paper jewellery

Shagila at work rolling together the newspapers in to thin reeds (seen in the background)

After a week of stay there, I am convinced that SHGs are playing a great role in improving the living conditions in the region through empowering women. Notes from next SHG follows soon...

"First" Steps

Going by the blog, the last month seems to have been very quiet... That is only to say that much has been happening behind the scenes, as we gear up to go live with our online store.

Our first shipments have finally arrived...receiving this "first" shipment is a wondrous moment, if you go by what Sandeep felt when he picked up the consignment... a bit magical. All the ideas, plans, hard work, discussions coming alive ...taking a tangible form and shape... Maybe a few years down the line, it will be just another shipment... But this "first" remains and will remain special.

We've taken our first steps now...but there is a long way to go... Chairevati !!! (as Archana would say!)

42.2 km, 03h:23m:34s, EUR 800

42.2 km is the distance Sandeep ran in 03h:23m:34s as part of the BMW Frankfurt Marathon yesterday. Running the marathon is in itself an achievement to be proud of. Sandeep (runner #9803) went beyond that.

He ran the marathon for a cause as part of Team Asha Frankfurt. The cause: primary education for the underprivileged children in India. Specifically, Sandeep ran to raise money for a project in Wazirpur (Delhi) to support a learning center for 80 "at-risk", out-of-school children, which will help them get back to mainstream schools. He has single-handedly raised EUR 800 as part of his one-man fund-raising campaign (Run to Educate), far exceeding his original target of EUR 500.

Photo Credits: Sanket Phadke & Meeta Paranjpe

Along the way, as Sandeep trained for the marathon, he kept passing on "pearls of wisdom" in his blog. Below are two of my favorites:

"Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional" (quoting Haruki Murakami here)
"Fear is an illusion" (as quoted here)

It's a perfect example of choosing to make a positive impact. We are proud of your achievement, Sandeep!.

Keep running!

Official News

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Two pieces of very good news...

1) mera Tierra is officially registered as mera Tierra GmbH!
Going by the date of the communication from the Amtsgericht, the company was registered on 6th Sept. 2011. (that makes mera Tierra a Virgo!)

2) Kasturi, who is part of the mera Tierra founding team, is now Dr. (des.) Kasturi Dadhe. She has completed her PhD after successfully defending her thesis today. Many hearty congratulations!!! We are happy and proud to have her aboard!

It was a good day today!