Technology Informatics Design Endeavour (TIDE), an organization in Karnataka, India, came up with a solution to the problem of reaching out to women who cook on stoves: It turned the women of the village into entrepreneurs.TIDE figured that it would be better to work directly with the users and adapted their cookers and stoves to the requirements of the women, says Radio Netherlands Worldwide.
TIDE also decided to train women to build and sell the stoves, priced at about US$ 5 or 6. Women who built these stoves installed them as well for a small fee. This took care of the apprehension faced by women to ask for outside male help.
TIDE not only taught women how to build stoves, the women trainers of TIDE themselves were instilled with confidence in their own ability.
TIDE’s Director Svati Bhogle tells the story of Lalita Bai, a worker in the fields who signed up to be a stove builder because she wanted to earn money to send her daughter to Teachers Training School. She went from village to village and built up such a successful business that not only did she get her daughter educated but now manages her own stove installation business.
Lalita Bai has been awarded the CII Woman Exemplar Award-2007 in Micro-Finance and Enterprise in recognition of her spirit to move from labour to stove building. She has setup an enterprise for construction of household stoves and has built over one thousand stoves over three years.
Photo Courtesy: TIDE
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