Indian Cooperative bumped into a unique cooperative initiative and thought it fit to publish the same for the benefits of its readers. It is about a self-help group working in Raipur, Chhattisgarh.
The SHG launched a project namely “Sahakar Tockree (Basket)” last year in November involving 150 women in 15 group altogether. The project is supposed to have achieved an extraordinary degree of success within a short span of time.
While sharing his experiences with Indian Cooperative, the SHG cell head of Sahakar Bharati at the national level Sunil Aggarwal said “More than 150 women are active in this group supplying vegetables at the door steps of people living in Raipur. The first thing the women did was to survey their respective areas to find out the vegetable requirements of families”, he said.
“About 1500 households are regularly supplied with vegetables at a competitive rate on the Market”, said Aggarwal.
“The women buy vegetables directly from the farmers and clean and package them. The project has made it possible for these women to earn around Rs 6 thousand per month”, informed Aggarwal who is also the Chief Learning Officer at Punjab National Bank, Delhi.
The project is getting a good response and the state chief minister Dr Raman Singh had shown a great interest in the experiment. Obviously, the project enjoys full support from the state government.
“We are eyeing to cover 1 lakh families in five years and fulfill all their vegetable needs. Our mission is ‘Kitchen Par Kabza’. I am saying ‘Kitchen Par Kabza’ because we will provide each and every thing used in kitchens apart from vegetables”, said Aggarwal to this correspondent on the phone.
According to an estimate, nearly 2 lakh Self Help Groups are active across different fields in the country helping the poor in society. Women who mostly run and work in these organizations manage to earn fairly substantial monthly incomes.