“Thousands of tonnes of cloth get wasted in the garment industry every day. They are simply thrown away. The women in villages like Pulgaon are creatively making cloth bags as more eco-friendly substitutes for the polluting plastic carry bags. Turning a crisis like Corona pandemic into an opportunity, these women supplied masks to Vidarbha. This shows the immense capability of entrepreneurship in rural women”, said young entrepreneur Wasudev Mishra. The 24-year old entrepreneur, Mishra was addressing the weekly session organised by Vidarbha Management Association (VMA) at Chitanvis Centre on the topic of ‘Social Entrepreneurship: Business that impacts social change’.

Mishra said that despite illiteracy and inadequate resources, women in rural areas contribute financially to the family in some form or the other. All that is required is to give women a chance and stand firmly behind them. These women have ingenuity even with inadequate means. But they do not have the skills to sell the manufactured goods in the urban market.

 

Giving an example, he said, “if a 15-year-old girl in a drought-stricken area like Satara can support a ‘Pani Foundation’, a rural woman can bring about any positive change”. Connecting these women through self-help groups in villages like Pulgaon, when Mishra started the work of Silaigram. There were barely 4-5 women who used to make bags from waste cloth. Their ideas were implemented into products that became so popular in the city that they got an order from Nagpur for 25,000 cloth bags. In this way they increased the scope of work by training more women. Today, more than 100 women from 4 centres produce more than half a ton of garment bags every month. Not only this, they now also make kurtas. Before Wasudev Mishra’s session, Aryan Aggarwal gave the LIG Tip in which he shed light on how social media can be used smartly for the expansion of business and gave ideas to the entrepreneurs on how they can increase their presence on social media platforms like WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.