Lessons Learned in Livelihoods

As a member of GDL, I contribute to the team via my work in the livelihoods sector. As the first batch of GDL volunteers, it was imperative for us to conduct a needs assessment of Bagar. Through this process, I discovered that the economy is struggling and that there are few forms of employment that make use of natural resources. Also I quickly learned that traditional Rajasthani culture demands that women be confined to the home to do domestic chores.

When contemplating how to add value to Bagar’s employment situation, I wanted to bring in a livelihood that was environmentally friendly, had local relevance, and that could offer women the chance to contribute to their household incomes and do something meaningful with their little bit of leisure time. Thus emerged my idea to use the Self Help Group (SHG) model as a vehicle towards women’s empowerment. SHGs are groups of at most twenty people (usually women) who come together for their personal/financial advancement.
While I was deciding upon a group of women for whom I felt this SHG would be suited, I asked the women to whom I was paying home visits their feelings about taking up a group income generating activity. They were overwhelmingly welcoming of me and open to my ideas, allowing me to go forward in posing potential livelihood options to them. They agreed (however most were still skeptical) to the concept of vermicomposting (the creation of organic fertilizer). Thus, the vision that came about was an SHG whose goals are the financial empowerment of its members through a collective livelihood and to serve as an outlet from daily tasks and struggles.

This project and vision are in the implementation process so following the GDL mandate to scale up our operations, I’m considering not just about how employment can reach more people but how entrepreneurship can be promoted here. As such, my plan is to create an adult vocational school wherein relevant livelihood options for this area, business skills, and confidence-building activities would be presented in a session of up to ten weeks in length. Upon graduation, a career center advisor would actively work with each student to help start one’s own business (which could involve the provision of seed capital, help with the creation of a viable business plan, and assistance in the starting of a group business with other graduates) or with job placement. The task is daunting but has the potential to be groundbreaking for Bagar.

Ownership

Now that I’m in the fourth month of my project, I can look back on what I have done with a handful of takeaways. A critical aspect of my project is the extent of ownership the women exhibit with respect to the group. By ‘ownership’ I mean that the women understand that each of the eleven members of the group are a ‘piece of the pie’ or rather, contributing individuals. In working toward group goals, the women know they are accountable to each other. To achieve sustainability, there is still a lot that needs to be done but the group has made some notable strides.

The concept of ownership arose during a weekly meeting in which the focus was leadership. In a short skit, Preeti and I played two of the women as leaders in the group setting wherein each of the women behaved in ways that compromised their leadership. This elicited responses of recognition in the women (especially those who were being shown in the skit) that the actions portrayed in the skit were not in line with the leaders’ responsibilities. The ability to actually see themselves as leaders allowed the women to understand why good leadership is required for the functioning of the group. Since then, though there is room for improvement, the leaders of the group take their positions somewhat seriously, elucidating the priority the group takes in their lives.

At the beginning of the meeting, leadership was introduced by discussing local community leaders, namely the sarpanch (head of the village governing body, the panchayat). Group leaders were selected thereafter and one member commented that the leaders were like the group’s very own sarpanches. This title gave the newly elected leaders positive acknowledgement which they associated with some level of prestige. While humorous, I assume that the label ‘sarpanch’ prompted the women to feel that they had to perform as leaders. As a symbol of their new titles, the women were also presented with ribbons to be worn on their sari’s or blouses. The ribbons legitimized the women’s roles, reinforcing their need to live up to the group’s expectations of them.

In terms of the vermicompost operation, each woman is assigned to two beds, meaning that there are a total of twenty one beds. However, one of the members, Radha Ji is only assigned to one with the intention that there be one person to monitor all the others’ work on a daily basis. For the most part, Radha Ji has been very cooperative. My line of thinking in creating this structure was to compel Radha Ji to follow through on this task because her work load is less than the others.

Ownership has come about at times because of cultural norms such as that of giving respect to elders. For example, when it came to creating new vermicompost beds, the elders of the group would delegate tasks and most often the younger women complied. This type of natural leadership also arose when one of the elders felt that a younger woman was not doing a thorough job and pushed her to change her behavior.

I also observed the benefits of rapport building. Because I had forged more than professional relationships with the women, they sometimes acted in the best interest of the group not because they had the group in mind but because they had an allegiance to me as a result of the time I spent with them and the care I showed for them. For example, one meeting’s purpose was to raise awareness about health and nutrition so the women’s blood was tested to asses hemoglobin levels. Those women who had a hemoglobin count below a certain number qualified as anemic and were given iron pills to be taken daily. Once I gave the pills to Vimla Ji, she immediately went to the compost plot to care for the vermicompost beds assigned to her.

Likewise, while walking back from Mani Ji’s farm after picking weeds with her, Mani Ji’s chappal (slipper) broke. She was carrying a heavy heap of weeds on her head so I offered her my shoe. She was reluctant to take it, worried that I would go bare foot, but eventually she did. This incident marked a turning point in our relationship; on several occasions thereafter she offered me support in the way of motivating other women around certain tasks and since then has gone to great lengths to care for me like she would her own daughter. While simply giving someone material items is not a good way to get people to change their behavior or attitudes permanently, showing that I care has moved the women to act in ways that benefit the group. Someone who played my role but maintained a strictly professional relationship with the women may not observe the same changes in them that I have.

In terms of procedural issues, attendance is taken at the start of each meeting. If a member is absent or tardy, she is fined. One day when I listed off Jamna Ji’s absences and incidence of tardiness to her, she vehemently denied them all. Neither of us compromised on our feelings of the accuracy of my records but I did say I would do away with them and start anew at subsequent meetings if she would agree to attendance being taken in a more transparent way. She agreed and actually offered to take the task on herself at each meeting. While this was a recent occurrence and she has yet to follow through on her promise, it was a lesson that the possibility of financial loss, even if minimal, can be used to alter behavior.

Ownership has also come about in terms of amending one’s attendance and participation. Bhani Ji is a member who goes to her parents’ home often and is seldom present for meetings. While she has enlisted her daughter-in-law, Sangeeta Didi, to maintain the beds while she is gone, Sangeeta Didi did not maintain Bhani Ji’s beds for about three days this past week for various reasons. When myself and some of the other women came to know this, we were disappointed. I posed the question to all the women at the following meeting if they felt that Bhani Ji should be removed from the group. Some were in agreement while others felt it was unfair to do so without speaking with either Bhani Ji or Sangeeta Didi first. A few of them spoke to Sangeeta Didi who was upset over the prospect of her mother-in-law being taken out of the group (probably because it would weaken her relationship with her mother-in-law). Since then, Sangeeta Didi has shown up on time everyday at the vermicomposting plot and does a thorough job. As undesirable of a position as it was to propose this kind of action, it proved that this push is the kind people sometimes need.

Recently it has been noted that the compost is ready in several beds. Several days earlier, we began removing the top layer of compost and prepared to package and sell it to someone who had requested to buy it. A lot of time was required for this process and the frustrating bit was that there were few women participating. Even one woman, Vimla Ji, finished caring for her two beds and then sat down near us to socialize and watch instead of actually taking part in the effort. The next day however, she arrived and immediately began helping in the preparation process before looking after her own beds. I assume she felt she needed to add to the group’s goal and found a way to be of value because she had actually seen what was involved in preparing the compost for sale.

Marketing

Marketing can often make or break a business. As such, it has played a rather large part in the planning of this vermicompost business venture. Formal means of marketing have been arranged for but when doing so I underestimated just how powerful word-of-mouth is.

As such, one of the most profitable advances that was made by way of informal promotion was conveying my project details to my own family members in person (when they visited) or over the phone. What resulted from telling my Masi (aunt) about what the women were selling was an interest from her brother-in-law in buying the entire supply of fertilizer from the women. Not only is this just a bulk sale, but because my Masi’s brother-in-law works for a large company, the compost will sell for Rs. 4 (Rs, 7 versus Rs. 3) higher than it would in Bagar and surrounding parts.

Conveying information about the compost also proved valuable during one of the GDL team’s public relations sessions. Through one of these sessions in which we each discuss our projects and raise awareness about GDL, a family expressed interest in starting a vermicompost bed of their own. Since then this has resulted in a sale of worms to them. While local use of vermicompost and organics has also been one of my goals, this meeting benefited the women as well as the area.

Another informal means of marketing which has proven helpful has been the spread of information via one of the husbands of the women. Heeralal Ji, Meera Ji’s husband informed a coworker of the existence of the group business. His coworker approached me and hopefully will be purchasing worms from the women in the near future. Shoring up support from the husbands, fathers-in-law and other males in the women’s lives is powerful because it gives the women more credibility as an all-female business runs the risk of a lot of male opposition.

A more formal means of promotion was the sole vermicompost awareness meeting that I held in April conducted by an organics expert and representative from the Morarka Foundation. While the meeting was small, the representative, Vinod Devi made the meeting personable, focusing on the farming issues of the farmers who attended. One of the farmers in attendance, Balaram Ji, was enthused to be present because he had experienced so many frustrations with chemical fertilizers. He seemed ready to make the switch to organic farming but did not have the know-how to go about it. Vinod Devi’s troubleshooting techniques and suggestions were so pointed that they seemed to give Balaram Ji hope about his deteriorating livelihood. Additionally, because the meeting was held at the dhaani’s local school, two of the school teachers attended. They appeared attentive and even endorsed the work the women were doing. One of the teachers even commented that he would help advertise for vermicompost meetings held in the future.

An aspect of our vermicompost marketing plan was to provide each of the women with vermicompost in order for them to try it out on their plants or in small areas on their farms. Several women did not use the compost and instead kept it for later use or gave it to someone else. Santosh Ji gave the fertilizer to a distant relative in nearby dhaani with whom I incidentally came into contact and she conveyed the positive effect of the vermicompost on her peppers. The informal marketing that took place provided us with a potential customer that I most likely would not have been able to reach on my own given time constraints and the fact that residents’ social and familial network in the area runs deeper than does mine.

Green Paper Relevance

An Indicorps documentation requirement was for each fellow to do a case study on some development intervention they implemented. I used my main project, the SHG, as my case study topic. If ever future GDL volunteers or employees were interested in forming other SHGs, my paper would serve as a lessons learned guide in terms of the steps involved in the SHG formation process. The act of brainstorming and documenting what worked and what wasn’t helpful. Not only was I able to see where I succeeded and where I could have done better, I have also been able to assess where the group stands in terms of reaching self-sufficiency. Furthermore, rather than just critiquing my own errors, I have produced a handful of recommendations based on what I think I should have done and what I feel that women who organize into SHGs would be open and responsive to.