Digital looms large
Household income of weavers in Nuapatna have tripled following digital interventions in the processes of designing, archiving, marketing and sales
A letter from an uncounted boy
A sneak peak into the life of an uncounted boy of the Agariya tribe who live in Gujarat’s Little Rann of Kutch
Sultan is expanding his horizon
Sultan is tailor who lives in Chanderi. A Class V dropout, he recently joined the Chanderiyaan family. Here is what he has to say about his new experience. “I used to work as a tailor at a shop with three other artisans. I cut cloth and stitched kurtas, pyjamas, pants and shirts for men. However,…
Demonisation forces weavers to ditch their art
Between November and January, Saindapur village in Barabanki district of Uttar Pradesh has witnessed a massive drop in business for handloom weavers. Once flourishing with the clitter-clatter of handlooms, Saidanpur — which is home to 200 weaver families — today complains of acute lack of work. After a number of meetings with suppliers and weavers…
Breaking the stereotype and stepping out
Yashoda Devi is 71 years old. A resident of Parsa village in Barabanki district of Uttar Pradesh, she lost her husband at the age of 40. Since then, she has had the sole responsibility of raising her eight children. Wages in Barabanki are low, and families are big. It’s almost the same story in every…
Crowdsourcing and Social Change
Preethi Herman Country Lead Change.org India In October 2015, Masooma Ranalvi wrote a blog about her experience of undergoing Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Her blog described her horrific experience of being circumcised as a little girl without her consent or preparation. What she didn’t know then was that she had just initiated the crowdsourced movement…
Newly inducted SoochnaPreneurs undergo training sessions
A two-day workshop was conducted for the newly recruited batch of 10 SoochnaPreneurs (SPs) in Barpali block in Orissa on January 5-6, 2017. The aim of the workshop was to reinforce entrepreneurial skill sets and desired behavioural and attitudal changes in SPs for enhanced productivity at work. One of the key objectives of the workshop…
Encouraging the digital route to better livelihood
For wider adoption of digitally designed graphs by Ikat weavers of Barpali and Nuapatna in Odisha, consultation workshops were recently organised at DigiKala centres in both the regions. DigiKala is an initiative of Microsoft and DEF that aims to digitally enable the weavers in these two handloom clusters. The workshop was organised to address the…
eNGO Challenge is all set to announce its winners
The 5th edition of eNGO Challenge Awards will take place under the larger umbrella of Prayag 2017. This year, eNGO Challenge opened its nominations for all grassroots organisations, irrespective of their work domain and whether or not they use digital tools to reach out to grassroots communities. This year, the platform received 331 nominations from…
A confluence of lives, culture, ideas and more
The world is standing at the crossroads. One way leads to inclusive globalisation and the other to exclusive localisation. While globalisation at the cost of local skills is certainly undesirable, sharing and engagement is the only way forward for any society and culture in the digital era that is the hallmark of inclusiveness. We cannot…