About women and livelihood

This particular project was a take-off on entrepreneurship. We discovered that while we are giving products for conventional use. Like for example if you take up a product of coconut drying, we were directing these products at men who were already having a coconut-drying unit. But our dryers and projects had lot more potential than reaching out to existing people but we felt that they could create new livelihood opportunities for women.

One of projects that we did along with UNDP-GEF small grants project was to use these dryers and to create livelihood opportunities for women in fish drying in the coast of Kerala. We didn’t know anything about how to dry a fish. We knew how to use a dryer. These women out there were people who were just drying fish on the road, beaches, than picking up and packing it. But that was not really value added, as it was not hygienically dried. So it would just go for poultry feed etc. Then we introduced them in drying prawns, another high value fish in biomass-based dryers. These women self-help groups have created enterprises around fish drying. So starting from almost no knowledge, they helped and we helped them and together we have about five groups of women who are using dryers to dry prawns and other four varieties of fish. They are low fat, fat fish, and small fish etc.

There is one group who has done exceptionally well and these women are doing business of about Rs.10, 000 per week. They are supplying dried prawns in the small sachets to about 180 small shops in Kerala. They have also taken the products to India International Trade Fair, and it going to Middle East country and all that. So from an idea it has come to that step, especially for women whom capacity building is far more difficult because they have to cope with multiple problems.