How Manjari Sharma Helped The Rural Women Earning Decent Income
Manjari Sharma, an IIM graduate was working as a corporate when visited the remote villages of Bihar. It was volunteer work and she spent 15 days there. To her astonishment, she found the women of the villages very skilful. She was amazed to see how those villagers women took out time for their household chores and invested themselves in small businesses.
To sum up, managing their household choruses with full devotion and then taking the rest of the time in other skills was so satisfactory to watch for Manjari Sharma. Those women invested themselves together in small-scale businesses such as papads, pickles, chutneys, and other many things.
Manjari Sharma could not help but think of helping them. She wanted to give them a new height and dimension to their business. She had experience and knowledge because of her degree and work to scale up their businesses. Shortly afterwards she was certain about her decision and hence quit her job for the sake of a new adventure in her life.
The new adventure was of course to provide financial independence to those women. Finally, when everything was ready she launched a for-profit social enterprise and named it ‘Farm Didi.’ The enterprise has had the only motto to empower rural women.
What was Manjari Sharma’s purpose to start ‘Farm Didi?’
When Manjari saw the rural women working on the small-scale businesses wholeheartedly in their spare time, she could not think otherwise but involved herself to lift their game up. She established the ‘Farm Didi’ to get them acquainted with food safety components. Moreover, the business aspects were also necessary for them to learn.
Most importantly, Sharma also assists them in marketing their products to the world and does the promotion by spreading the word of their preservative-free locally made food items. Up till now, the enterprise has helped more than a thousand women. It has reached 40 villages yet but plans to reach a million one day.
Interestingly, around 100 self-help groups of women have become a part of this initiative which has led the rural women to earn decently. Manjari Sharma states in an interview that she is also into bringing the marginal farmers together so that they can also earn decently. And to do that, she says that we need to bring them together.
We furthermore need to increase their role in food processing. To conclude, the farmers she states are working as producers only. However, if food processing starts taking place in villages, the farmers will get a good amount of income.
Author: Simran K Parmar
A post graduate in English Literature, secular humanist, critical thinker, an outspoken atheist, follower of equality and a lover of philosophy. craftedfashion94@gmail.com
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