Pragya is first woman e-rickshaw driver from Mirzapur. Her story inspires girls to break the patriarchal barrier and follow their dreams.
Stories of Dharmendra and Gulshan have inspired others in Mirzapur to take up entrepreneurship as a reliable livelihood path
Meera Kushwaha stands as a role model for other young girls and continues to mentor them in realizing their potential
Listening to Radio Bundelkhand enabled Meera Bai to return to her family business of selling earthen pots.
Story of a woman entrepreneur leading a green business. Mikki Devi is one of the first women entrepreneurs in the fly ash brick sector in Bihar.
From what started as a humble beginning in her backyard, Asha Devi has now scaled her business to a level where she now aggregates vermi-compost from other units in her village and sells it at almost double the price.
Ms. Rekha Wadhva, a resident of Pitampura (Delhi), is a home maker with a passion for gardening. When the Development Alternatives’ team shared the concept of kitchen waste recycling with the various households in Saraswati Vihar, she was first amongst the 40 households to grab the opportunity to get trained to convert kitchen waste into compost through waste care composters and installed the composter at her home. She has been wise in converting waste into manure.
Prem Narayan, a resident of Manpura village in Shivpuri district of Madhya Pradesh lives with his wife and a 14 year old son. With 1.5 acres land and managing a single crop, life was not easy for Narayan and his family. Poor productivity of the land further aggravated the struggle for daily survival. Pren Naraan was introduced to vegetable farming. He is now a leader in his village and has rekindled the faith in land amongst his fellow farmers.
Suman Rana from Pasiyahi Khurd village (Uttar Pradesh) felt the need to start earning because of the increasing cost of living and fewer number of earning members in her family. She enrolled into the TARA Akshar+ programme and her life changed for better.
Pran Singh, a small farmer with only 2.5 acres of land, lives in Busahar village of Shivpuri District in Madhya Pradesh. Successive years of drought and the lack of irrigation sources had made struggling with farm distress a way of life posing as a threat to livelihoods. In 2016, DA enabled Pran to come under the fold of the WADI programme supported by NABARD initated with the idea of providing a holistic approach to address the production, processing and marketting needs of the tribal famrers. Today, Pran Singh is a successful WADI farmer and has been able to come out of his poverty. He now has a steady source of income.
Mahesh Kumar, owing to the poor financial condition of his family, could not pursue higher studies after completing class 12th. He then enrolled at Gurukul Career Academy, Jodhpur, to get trained for a Micro Finance job role...
Mr. Babulal Khuswaha and Mr. Narendra Khuswaha are locals from the village of Bhundri, near Orchha town (Niwari block, Tikamgarh district, Madhya Pradesh). From the year 2000 to 2006, Mr. Babulal was working as an unskilled labourer in an MCR production unit of TARA Nirman Kendra; after which he went onto working for an MCR enterprise as a daily wage labourer for about four years...
Rajesh was dissatisfied as his teaching jobs left him no time. It was near to impossible for him to get leave during school term and he could not afford to lose the extra wages he earned from tuitions. This resulted in Rajesh giving a miss to family functions and religious ceremonies. He also found it difficult to fulfill his errands and time for himself was a rare luxury. Nevertheless, he continued with his job to support his wife and two young sons. Then one day, opportunity knocked on his door...
Twenty years ago, Maheshwari Devi used to accompany her husband to the stone crushing unit where he was employed as a labourer. Since his hours were long, she looked to keep herself busy. She bought some cigarettes, packets of gutkha and rolls of bidi from Jhansi and decided to sell these by the roadside. I bought things worth Rs.50 and was amazed that it all got sold on the same day, -- she remarks. This gave her the first taste of income. Gradually, Maheshwari increased the variety and amount of goods, consequently increasing her income. Conversations with her customers made her realize that she could also run a tea stall...
Guddi, a young lady from Madhya Pradesh, had an inherent talent for bamboo work but wasn’t aware of it. Times were extremely hard for her family, who relied on manual labour to make ends meet. But life had different plans for her. She stumbled upon a women’s group in the village of Makara and the inquisitive Guddi discovered that the members would be taught to make bamboo items...
TARA Loom is an ingenious machine that incorporates many advanced features to improve efficiency of the weaver and the quality of the woven fabric with existing levels of operational skills. The manually operated TARA Loom combines versatility with ease of operation. It is ergonomically designed so that it conforms to traditional workmanship to produce better quality fabric. It demonstrates that it is possible to combine high productivity, superior quality of fabric and ease of operation in one machine that can also use different yarns like cotton, wool, silk and synthetic...