Project Tags: Eco Friendly

The Farmpreneur Programme has been co-created and is being co-implemented with the Farm2Food Foundation, Assam and has been supported by Assam Sarva Siksha Abhiyan and National Foundation of India. In Dhriiti we strongly believe that the perception of farming and farmers is such that the new generations do not look at farming as a sustainable livelihood/career option. Farmpreneur is an entrepreneurship program that introduces the farmer as an entrepreneur and farm-based enterprises to rural school children. It seeds the concept of organic farming and entrepreneurship amongst young school students so that they bring forth a new paradigm of Farm based entrepreneurs when they grow up.

The programme was initiated in 2012 and since then around 3000 Young Farmers have been trained and around 200 School Kitchen Gardens have opened in 4 districts of Assam. The Farmpreneur programme offers an extensive curriculum of survey workshops, orientation programs, seminars, agricultural exhibitions and capacity building. And all learnings of these farmers are put to practice at their little school kitchen gardens. Right from planning their gardens, sowing the seeds to maintenance, harvesting and sales is handled by the little farmers in the schools.

Godrej in collaboration with Dhriiti works towards building capacities of rural retailers and strengthening their capacities to increase their income levels. The program has been initiated in 2 states – Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. The programme mobilises and trains rural micro retailers not only build their capacities in doing better business and enhance their livelihoods but also looks at building a model of expansion of rural sales through the outreach of these micro retailers. The micro retailers go door to door to enable product promotion as well as servicing of the last mile.

The programme has been initiated in 2016 as a pilot and looks to effectively capacitate more than 150 micro retailers in the pilot phase. The Rural Intensification Program aims to provide retailing skills to the rural youth such that its becomes an effective source of livelihood for them. The programme envisages creating a pool of rural micro-retailers for effective rural reach-out and market penetration

The Eye-Mitra EDP is being implemented with support from NVG 2.5 of the Essilor Group. The programme currently runs in the 6 states of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. The programme has been designed in close engagement with the NVG 2.5 sales team to strengthen the entrepreneurial competencies of the Eye-Mitra Opticians being trained by different skill development organizations. The Eye-Mitra Opticians are basically rural opticians based out of big villages providing optical solutions in the vicinity from the shop as well as by conducting Visual Screening Events (VSEs) in their region.

The programme was initiated in Jan 2015 and has been successful in training 669 EMOs across 24 city training centres in 6 states till now. The 5 day EDP component has been weaved into the Eye-Mitra technical training to enhance the entrepreneurial skills, profitability and sustainability of the EMOs. The 5 day EDP trains the participants on soft skills like negotiation, risk taking etc to functional skills like costing & pricing, selling, inventory management, book keeping etc. The participants also go through a practical understanding of the business as they conduct a VSE by themselves to learn the on-ground skills of marketing, selling and shop management.

Dhriiti has launched WE Can India: Workshops and Business Plan Competition for Women Entrepreneurs – an initiative dedicated to promoting women’s entrepreneurship, developed in partnership with the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women and funded by U.S. Embassy India.

WE Can is a business accelerator programme that has trained and mentored 125 young women entrepreneurs from Delhi, Jaipur, Lucknow, Dehradun and Chandigarh. The aim of this project is to equip women entrepreneurs with the skills, knowledge and confidence needed to grow their businesses so that they can realize their ambitions, contribute to their economies and act as role models to others in their communities.

The initiative involves an intensive five-day business training course which is followed by six weeks of mentoring. The women entrepreneurs were supported to develop a business plan, providing them with a solid foundation to sustain and grow their enterprises. 26 of the women are selected and receive incubation support to kick-start their businesses.

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Impact Numbers-WE Can India

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No. of WE Trained

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Partners/Funders