Sakhi women made 1.50 lacs in short period of one month in COVID 19 pandemic, helped thousands persons in getting quality masks and contribute in their family income

Story Highlights

More than 2 lacs masks were produced in just one month and are being distributed in near by community through Sakhi project

• This generated over 5000 individual workdays so far.
• The mission was no one without mask in their surroundings.
• As per our report by team 2.5 million INR revenue generated by Sakhi Women.

Rajasthan is a very colorful state with vibrant community, those who are always very strong and ready to tackle any challenge. 1/3 of the state always faces natural disasters like drought, floods, harsh weather etc. every year. But this year is very different from others, C19 brought a very unique and unprecedented challenge. Most of the things stopped due to lockdown.

Many of the people have lost their jobs, mostly enterprises hit adversely. According to McKinsey, the hardest hit sectors may not recover till 2021, Live mint said that Indian economy will contract by 5% in FY21, ICRA told India’s GDP like to grow 2% in FY21 and Business Today also reported that unemployment rate rises to 26% during lockdown, with more than 100 Mn jobs at risk.

Like every place, Chittorgarh also faced with a real dearth of masks in markets. As various study suggested Mask is a new vaccine for corona virus. In that scenario mask was must for all of us. Challenges always brings opportunity as well. When mostly people were locked in their houses Sakhi women come forward as a corona warrior who started the production of masks in large scale. Sakhi women produced over 200000 masks. They have taken care of all possible safety measures.

 

Assema Bano one of the Sakhi women told us that she has made 100 mask per day. That helped me to earn 15000 in one month in the time of lockdown. There are many Sakhi women who worked tirelessly to produce quality masks. Rekha a confident Sakhi corona warriors reported that she and her Sakhi’s produced 5000 masks in a single day. This was our social responsibility to make available masks to all members so that we can beat corona virus.

Challenge Accepted: Technology Enabled To Mass Production

This initiative generated wages for 100 Sakhi women who produced 1.5 lacs masks and earned livelihoods for them. This brilliant solution leverages all possible local resources. Preeti Yadav a designer at Sakhi Centre proudly shared that she has trained all Sakhi women in a very short span of time. She has developed a good video- how to make masks and circulated all members. She helped them to get all latest knowledge’s how to produce masks.

Distribution of Masks and Awareness Campaign These masks were distributed in 174 villages and surrounding towns (Ajmer, Baran, Bhilwara, Chittorgarh, Dholpur, Jaisalmer Rajsmand, Udiapur, Uddham Singh Nagar) in 5 districts. Sakhi women Federations collectives of Self Help Groups (SHGs) lead this distribution drive along with teams. ThE Initiative reached out to local stakeholders police, hospital and medical staffs, vendors, migrants etc.

Partners: This initiate was supported by Hindustan Zinc Ltd. RCRC, SIDBI and facilitated by Manjari Foundation and Sakhi women federations.