A self-help group of 10 women in the Nadgakhadi village in the tribal district of Dang runs a bakery which they started by collecting their savings four years ago.
The bakery named 'Apna bakery' sells Ragi based baked food. After four years of hard work, the group is known as 'Bakery Sisters'.
Speaking to ANI, Kalpana Gaikwad of Apna Bakery said, "When we started the bakery we use to make biscuits of flour, but the women working here suggested to start making food of Ragi."
"Ragi is the main crop cultivated in Dhan which has protein and many other vitamins. Whatever we have earned we save it to buy more material for the bakery, after paying the daily wages to women working in the bakery," she said.
The bakery products are sent to Surat, Saputara, Ahemdabad and Mumbai. The bakery produces Nankhatai, Chakri, toast and papad. The women working in the bakery are daily waged workers earning Rs 200 a day.
The women of the Ridvi Sidvi Self Help Group have known each other since 2011 and meet for mass savings at least once a month. The support group was formed under the government's Sakhi Mandal Yojana. A gram sabha was organized in a village, in which information about village-level businesses was given by Aga Khan NGO.
Some of the women in the village became interested in the business and contacted the NGO for more information. Seeing the interest of these women, visits to other successful rural industries were organized to make them more aware. After the visit, the women expressed their desire to start sewing at an early stage.
This group of women started a business in the year 2017 under the name 'Apna Bakery'. For this, help was also received from the organization for the required license and registration.
A worker in the bakery Jayshree Bhoye said, "As farm labourers, we used to get a daily wage of Rs 100. Now, we get Rs 200 per day."
"Earlier we used to have monetary difficulty and had to ask money from our husbands but now we are self-sufficient," she added.
( With inputs from ANI )
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