Livelihood

Megha Gupta met Dharavi slum dwellers and came up with an amazing e-commerce platform that is enabling them to earn a better livelihood. Know more about Gupta's journey and how dharavimarket.com is making a difference.

The students from SRCC college started an initiative to help the amazing art form of puppetry, and today they have managed to change the lives of 14 such artists. From connecting the puppeteers with the market to providing training and organizing workshops, this team is transforming the fate of traditional puppeteers.

They toil day and night for a meager income. They struggle every day to bring to us an ancient tradition in the best of its form. They work with utter brilliance; their skills have been passed on for generations. However, the bearers of this tradition are among the least rewarded craftsmen (or rather, craftswomen) in the country. Meet the weavers of Mizoram - and lend them a helping hand!

The biggest problem that people in rural areas face is the lack of livelihood options. The Mukti organization, through its Mukti Community Development Fund, is changing the lives of the villagers in a simple way. Here is the big impact these small loans have been creating in the lives of people in the Sunderbans.

From providing various skills and training to connecting the students with potential employers, TARA livelihood Academy is bridging the gap between the rural community and employment. From offering on-ground work experience to building capabilities and linkages for starting one's own enterprise, TLA is covering all grounds. Read more about their work.

When Kannan Lakshminarayan completed his engineering from IIT, he wanted to do something that could leave a positive impact in the rural sector. On seeing the plight of the small cotton farmers in Vidarbha, he came up with an idea to help them get an alternative source of income and increase their value proposition. He started Microspin Machine Works that in 3 years has doubled the revenue of many farmers by allowing them to also become producers of yarn! Read more to know about his brilliant idea and how he executed it with a little professional help.

You will truly see how one man's trash is another man's (or woman's) meal in this essay which ventures into the Mumbai slums and takes a look into the lives of the "entrepreneurs" who are trying to eke out a living from plastic discards. Meet the fiesty Lakshmi and learn how she responds when her daughter is teased with "Teri maa kachre wali hai"!

Villagers are mostly dependent on farming for their livelihood. What happens when that doesn’t yield the desired result? Should they starve in poverty? Bharath Vineeth didn’t think so! Read how he went about creating alternative income opportunities for villagers by converting available resources into successful businesses.

Govind Singh Rathore was 14 years old when he realised that in his patriarchal society widows have no status, respect or any rights! Together with his family and friends, he took steps to raise the status of Dalit women in the caste-prejudiced state of Rajasthan, and so Sambhali Trust was born in 2007. This is what they do.

Remember the 2004 Bollywood film in which an NRI Mohan Bhargava (played by Shah Rukh Khan) returns to India and is moved by the harsh realities faced by the people in his village to become an agent of change? The name of that film was Swades, and here is an organization called Swades Foundation that shares a similar mission - to bring about change in rural India. To know how they are doing this, read more.