Help rural women earn incomes through home-based food businesses

There are approximately 7 crore rural households living below the poverty line in India. With COVID, women are bearing the brunt of the economic and social fallout of COVID-19 and youth have lost employment opportunities and returned home. In TIDE's experience, many women and youth from these households are entrepreneurial, have strong survival instincts and a deep desire to come out from their cycle of poverty. However, the infrastructure and institutional mechanisms required for creating, nurturing, and sustaining micro-enterprises in rural areas are not fully in place. Livelihood opportunities need to be expanded and diversified. Additionally, aspiring entrepreneurs face social and cultural barriers which need to be addressed.

TIDE’s work in technology based micro-entrepreneurship for rural communities  has proven to be a successful model in this area. TIDE's Women's Technology Park (WTP) , a 2-acre residential training centre, is a hub for these activities.

Over 2,500 women have been trained in livelihood skills by TIDE, covering various technologies and set up farm based and non-farm-based enterprises. TIDE has also encouraged rural entrepreneurs to set up digital Kiosks to provide common digital services and help youth to explore various entrepreneur opportunities. Apart from technical skills, TIDE is also helping entrepreneurs by training in marketing, labelling, packaging, building SOPs and business plans.

TIDE is also providing infrastructure, licensing, and software support to carry out entrepreneur activities. These include providing papad machines to women groups, Kiosk kits to entrepreneurs ( Desktop, printer and fingerprint scanner ) , tailoring machines, weighing and sealing machines for food entrepreneurs. 

Your donation will help us provide the following services to these rural entrepreneurs 

•  FSSAI certification to women groups to enable better market reach
• Providing weighing and sealing machines  for packaging and labelling of products
• Papad rolling machine for food SHG women groups 

Year after year, TIDE, through its Women's Technology Park (WTP), trains and helps incubate hundreds of women-led micro enterprises. 20 ragi products enterprises have been incubated by TIDE in the last 2 years with profits ranging from Rs 2,000 to Rs 20,000 per month and 50 new enterprises have been initiated. We also provide support to women such as packaging and labeling, FSSAI certification, Market linkages etc. School children visit WTP and learn about environment-friendly technologies. Visitors from other NGOs, civil society organisations and Government visit WTP to learn from our model. Corporate volunteers visit for community engagement and mutual learning.

Read a case study of success here: https://sggsc.blog/2018/03/12/societe-generale-gsc-csr-impact-story-from-agricultural-labourer-to-a-successful-micro-entrepreneur/