Handicraft Livelihood Creation Project Dausa, Rajasthan
Beyond Eye in collaboration with Pransh India, conducted a workshop with a group of women in Dausa, Rajasthan. These women are not considered as bread earners for their family and these norms prevent them from accessing sources of income. For this, the workshop emphasized upon imparting and building skills pertaining to manufacturing handmade accessories.
The objective of the workshop was to build their skills, particularly in the sphere of handmade products, so that they could have better avenues for earning their livelihood, apart from farming and husbandry. It was recognized that these group of women were entangled in the day to day functioning of their respective households and therefore, they would have had difficulties in commuting to different locations.
Hence, Beyond Eye took it upon themselves to take the workshop to them and provide them with exposure on how they could remain in Dausa and still have a source of income for themselves. As mentioned above, the workshop emphasized on imparting and building their skills pertaining to handmade accessories. This decision was based upon the fact that the festival of Raksha Bandhan is around the corner and people buy and exchange rakhis. Therefore, these women could make rakhis which could be sold in the market, leading to generation of income.
“They have a sense of design and sense of colour. But what they were lacking was platform and material. The stereotype I had that women from villages wouldn’t be aware of intricate designing techniques was shattered.” – Yaral (workshop trainer).
The organization through this workshop attempted to provide this platform to them. However, in terms of organizational learnings, some of the major issues which came up were regarding logistical issues like of transportation and management of material – taking the material from one place to another, mobilizing people, getting the trainer to travel, etc. It was reflected that conducting workshop like this one needs a greater investment of time and money.
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