Livelihood

Bamboo Workshop And Training Program:

The proposed area was once well known for the bamboo mat weaving activity. Bamboo mat weaving was the sole source of livelihood for majority of the population belonging to the underprivileged section in the area. The whole family was used to be engaged in this occupation of mat weaving and they never felt need f or migrating to other places or engaging in other labour activities. Such were the golden days of this occupation that nobody in the family ever felt need of seeking any other work outside the village. But, now it has declined so much that only rare families are found to be engaged in this activity and that too restricted to the older people. It has become impossible for the family to meet all their needs by solely depending on mat weaving work. Now, all the younger people are forced to work as a labourer in agriculture and allied sectors in the village e. Many times they have to migrate to faraway places because of the unavailability of employment opportunity in the vicinity.

Nearly all the families have legal status as a bamboo artisan and have permit to avail about 1500 bamboo per year from the forest department at concessional rates. The youth has all the required skills of traditional mat weaving activity but they don’t prefer to engage themselves in it owing to the meager returns. The cost of bamboo has increased but the value of the output is not proportionately increased. The revival of the occupation is possible with advance technology support and value addition to the existing bamboo mats by processing them into bamboo mat boards. The revival of the occupation will not only solve the employment issue of the engaged youths but also new generation quality bamboo products will be available in the market. The revival will boost up economy of the region and also will provide the renewable source to meet the needs of construction and furniture material which is currently met by the wood.

SHG development and formation :

VCS mobilize and finding survey at Gondia district where VCS came up with SHG formation and Training to capacity building and awareness the all governmental schemes to access and strengthen the women individual to societal. SHG formation to organize rural based women SHGs formed and these SHGs then combine to form the constellations. This helped in ensuring better bargaining power, support and adequate returns to the women SHGs. Each constellation has around 10 villages and each village have around 200 to 300 SHGs covering around 20000 women SHGs. Constellation functioned as the processing centre. Five processing centers are proposed in the area. As the project expands the number of constellations can be increased.

Artisans development programs :

Mobilization of artisans this program let to mobilizing the artisans group and identifying as what stages and skills they have. We also have formed artisans groups and trained them for the creating of different product which can be sold in the market. The artisans were in the focus of proving them with needed skills up gradation which were the need of honor. Socio-economic status of artisans the socio-economic details of artisans were collected before the onset of training workshop using the preforms developed by VCS.  The training only provided them the know-how for production of items based on market demand and methods for value addition. The impact of it can be assessed only after a reasonable period– at least after one year after establishment of the Bamboo Consortium and associated Production unit.