The Project

Women’s Empowerment through Local Livelihood

Women’s Empowerment through Local Livelihood, or the WELL project, as it is more commonly known, began in 2005. The projects main goals are to create alternative livelihood for women from the villages around Auroville and to promote products made of recycled materials.
Danny and Orly are the guiding force behind this project. They are from Israel and arrived in Auroville in 2004. Orly had her own studio in Israel, where she worked with papier mache and other recycling techniques as well as giving lessons to mentally challenged people and hard to reach teenagers. Danny is a certified public accountant by profession. They have successfully combined her experience in recycling techniques and social work and his abilities in business strategies to set up and run the WELL project.
The WELL team also includes designer Vidhya, who joined in August 2006, as well as Raji and Bindu, who maintain the WELL Centre and work with Vidhya on the development of new product designs.
The WELL Centre offers technical training to the women. For a period of four to six months, a group of eight to ten women learn to create products using recycled materials, mainly newspaper, as raw material. They are taught, amongst other things, to roll newspaper into reeds, which they will later weave into baskets. Apart from baskets, the present range of WELL products also includes coasters, paper beads, jewelry and accessories such as hair clips.
In addition to the technical training, the WELL project also includes a social empowerment programme. As part of this programme, the women are offered lessons in enterprise development, health and hygiene awareness and family care as well as physical activity classes. The programme also includes empowerment sessions such as personal development coaching, group strengthening and improvement of communication skills.

After the training is completed, the women are assisted by WELL in setting up their own profit sharing production workshop and in the marketing of their products. They also continue to benefit from the social programme.

At present, the third group of women is undergoing training at the WELL Centre.
Usha is part of that group. She is twenty eight years old and lives in Kootroad. This will be her first job. “My husband is a mason. His income is not enough to support the family. We have two daughters,” she says. Usha has not attended school “but I want my daughters to get a good education. That was my main motivation for taking part in this programme: to be able to earn an extra income to educate my daughters.”
The two previous groups, after having completed their training, have opened their own production workshops in the village of Allankuppam. The first one, the Sri Mother workshop, started operating one year ago and the second one, the Mirra workshop, was inaugurated more recently, at the end of December 2006.
Both workshops are running well. The WELL products are now being sold in different stores across India. They are also being exported to different countries like Germany, Australia and Ireland.
The Sri Mother workshop produces woven baskets of different sizes, shapes and colours, while the Mirra workshop concentrates on producing coasters, jewelry and accessories. Danny feels it is important to keep the workshops’ range of products different, so they do not end up competing with each other.
The Sri Mother workshop has been successfully running from the beginning. In order to keep up with the orders they receive, the team is now employing eight additional women to assist them with production.
Veni has been part of the Sri Mother workshop since its beginning. She has two children and comes from the Aravindapuram village. “At the Sri Mother workshop, we are not working under someone, we are all equals. So, we are actually running our own company,” she says with much excitement. “And now we have even started hiring and training new women.” She says in her village, people were surprised that they were using old newspaper to make their products, that they were recycling waste, they had never seen that before. “With my new earnings, I have bought clothes for myself, and for my children, and I even contribute to my children’s school and tuition fees,” she says proudly.
The Mirra workshop is also now employing four additional women, whom they are training themselves.
Vijaya, from Aravindapuram , is part of the Mirra workshop. She used to work in the fields as a daily labourer. Her husband still does. “When you work on the fields, you sometimes have work for one day, and then for the next ten days, there is no work. Now I have a fixed job, which offers me more security,” she says. “Since I started training at the WELL Centre, I also learned so many new things.”

Vidhya, the designer at WELL works on developing new product designs, and also trains the women for production. She joined the team when the second group of women, who now run the Mirra workshop, was starting their training.
“I know where they started and where they are at now,” she says. “After their training they were not really sure whether they would be able to run the company on their own. But they are doing well, they have formed a strong group identity, and their confidence has improved. The women also say their families respect them more now, and it seems some of their husbands even help them with the house work …”

Though promoting recycled products is an important part of the WELL project, that is not where it ends. The WELL project, besides providing alternative livelihood to these women, also empowers them socially to a great extent. It is already impacting their lives and that of their families in a significant way.