Sushila Devi, 40, had never stepped out of her village before she became a part of the livelihood development programme. However, in the last two months, she has not just received training of preserving fruits through various ways and is now a more confident woman.
Resident of Sakrigali village, situated on the bank of Ganga in Sahibganj district, Devi said, “I had never imagined that one day I will actually be not just learning something like this but will also be contributing to income of the family too.”
Sushila is among one of the 150 women who have been trained for livelihood development in the first batch under Namami Gange Project.
Deputy Development Commissioner of Sahibganj, Nancy Sahay informed that Namami Gange Project is a multi faceted programme including around seven to eight components like cleaning of the river, infrastructural development and livelihood development among others.
“There are a number of components under the livelihood development programmes in which various trainings are to be provided to women of villages situated on the bank of Ganga,” she said.
There are a total of 78 villages in Sahibganj situated on the river bank and livelihood training has to be conducted in all of them.
“In the first phase which completed recently, we targeted around150 women of two villages, Maskalaiya and Sakrigali, and trained them in various sector from Prasad and incense stick making to fruit processing,” Sahay said.
The training is being provided by district Ganga committee headed by the deputy commissioner in cooperation with Wildlife Institute of India.
The women of Maskalaiya village were trained in Prasad and incense stick making as the village is situated in Taljhari block which houses a famous ISCON temple, thus can be a good place of business for these women.
Many women were also trained in fruit processing and made a variety of pickles, chutney and squashes. Some other women were also given the training of beautician by experts invited from Delhi.
"Initially we are trying to provide a market for these products at a local level but once the production increases we will start branding them and try to get a much bigger market," the DDC said.
The work for training women in the second batch will start soon. “We plan to train around a batch of 150 women of two villages in duration of two months, thus gradually covering all 78 villages,” Sahay said.