Disha works in the said taluka through its Fellowship Programme for creating young leadership among the affected community for addressing the issues of social justice and development, beside bringing new and positive change in lives of schedule caste, tribal, women and vulnerable community of the state.
Earthquake on Republic?s day left life totally shattered in Gujarat, many lost their relatives, many lost their homes. The Vav and Tharad talukas of Banaskantha districts are adjoining to the Kutchch district. The said talukas were also badly damaged by 26th January?s earthquake. Since the region is located in deserts. The region has been under severe drought conditions due to failure of rainfall, although the region is drought prone area and chronic to scarcity conditions. The people were already struggling the drought condition and now badly affected by the earthquake. The earthquake made life of people more vulnerable. People, having received no help from the government and are left with no option except migrating or selling their little property whatever they left with after he earthquake. Bu people have some traditional skills of making shoes, embroidery work and others. We have identified some families, who are in need of some help to revive their own earning skills but need some financial help and motivation to pursue the work.
The following proposal is to work with most vulnerable community of Chammar ( shoe makers) for helping them overcome the impact of earthquake.
The community members could be helped for regenerating their livelihood through income generation activity, by facilitating the existing capacities to produce the material by applying inherent home based skills like making footwear from locally available material. As the community members are from schedule caste have been in the activity from generations and still are engaged to earn the ir livelihood from making and selling the footwear in local market. Around 100 families have been identified from the earthquake affected villages and the selected families have skills of making the footwear, as the affected families could be helped by providing them raw material for six months so that they could make the finished product and be able to sell in the local market. 50 families will make Desi Boot (Local shoes), 25 families will make traditional footwear called Mojadi and the remaining 25 families will make Chapal, these footwear items have local market at surrounding town like Sanchor, Bhabor and Tharad. Although the local artisan do get the work but are massively exploited by the trader, those give them only wages for making the footwear products.
We intend to facilitate these earth quake affected families by providing them raw material and also access to market, where they can sell their product, we will be guiding them in bargaining to fetch maximum amount out of selling the artisan products. The participating communities will contribute their labour and after the selling the finished product, they can keep the profit made with them and they will have to return the capital cost of raw material back to co-operative to restart the cycle again. (This would be like loaning them without interest so that the seed money remains intact to rebegin the cycle by providing them raw material)
The income from the work, under the project would be supplementary to their household income. If two persons from one family are provided the raw material, each family can have additional income of Rs.100/day.
| Item | Families | Raw material/day/family | Raw material per day | Total Monthly cost | 6-month cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shoes | 50 | Rs.39 | Rs.1,950 | Rs.58,500 | Rs.3,51,000 |
| Mojdi | 25 | Rs.39 | Rs.975 | Rs.29,250 | Rs.1,75,500 |
| Chappal | 25 | Rs.39 | Rs.975 | Rs.29,250 | Rs.1,75,500 |
| Total | 100 | Rs.7,02,000 |
The community members after having applied their skills on raw material can make finished product, which can be sold in the market and profit could be accrued
| Item | Families | Profit/day/family | Profit per day | Total Monthly | Half Yearly |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shoes | 50 | Rs.90 | Rs.4,500 | Rs.1,35,000 | Rs.8,10,000 |
| Mojdi | 25 | Rs.90 | Rs.2,250 | Rs.67,500 | Rs.4,05,000 |
| Chappal | 25 | Rs.85 | Rs.2,125 | Rs.63,750 | Rs.3,82,500 |
| Total | 100 | Rs.8,875 | Rs.2,66,250 | Rs.15,97,500 |
| The total expected amount of finished product | Rs.15,97,500 |
| The cost of raw materia | Rs.7,02,000 |
| The expected profit | Rs.8,95,200 |
| In six month each family can get | Rs.8,952 |
The entire project will be undertaken by DISHA in earthquake affected areas of Vav and Tharad taluka, where Disha's fellow workers are quite actively pursuing the development issues and in recent earthquake, the fellows in the said pockets have done marvelous work like food for work and wages for work for rebuilding the livelihood regeneration in the earthquake affected areas. For more information, kindly go through the attached file Ambedkar, which the documentation of livelihood regeneration through water shed and embroidery work. The report reflects the capacity of executing such entrepreneur work.