To provide sustainable livelihoods to marginalised women, the Birla White manufacturing unit of UltraTech Cement Limited located in Kharia Khangar village near Jodhpur in Rajasthan, India, has launched ‘Project Prayas’. Project Prayas (meaning ‘endeavour’ in Hindi) is a part of the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative of the unit aimed at contributing towards helping socio-economically marginalised women to secure sustainable livelihoods through vocational training.
The Birla White unit team had started helping the local women to augment their income by forming a self-help group (SHG) called Prayas Sakhi Mandal in 2003. The unit team had been helping the women avail bank loans to meet their personal and household expenses through this SHG. In 2019, the unit team commenced training the women in stitching and tailoring with the objective of helping them secure sustainable livelihoods.
In 2023, the unit team identified stitching and supplying of safety reflective jackets used by the unit employees as an opportunity to enhance the income for the women through Project Prayas. Twenty women from the SHG were selected and provided special training by the unit for making the jackets in line with international standards of safety and as per the Company’s quality norms.
Based on the samples of the jackets made by the women, an order for 975 jackets was placed by the unit to the SHG in May 2023. Out of the 20 women who took the special training, 12 women were selected for fulfilling the order. The unit team created a dedicated safety jacket production facility in the premises owned by the company near its unit for the SHG members. The unit provided the fabric and other raw materials for making the jackets. Within a month the women delivered over 500 jackets.
Twenty-six-year-old Sunita from Kharia Khangar village in Jodhpur district used to earn a meagre living for her family from agriculture in a small piece of land. She wanted to send her two children to a good school. Being a member of the SHG, she took training in the stitching of the safety reflective jackets provided by the unit team. With the supplementary income she is expecting from the delivery of the jackets, she is confident of sending her children to a good school. She said, “I feel financially empowered now and have found a new identity and confidence as I can take independent decisions and have a better say in family matters”.