Women empowerment with respect to banana fiber
Women empowerment is a much talked about topic these days. So what is really women empowerment. Indian government like many other western countries have taken many steps to give more opportunities to women to accommodate them in jobs which otherwise was held by men. Defining women empowerment - accepting women’s viewpoints, giving them equal status. Providing them access to education, awareness literacy and adequate training. Whether we like it or not women are key decision makers in everyone’s life whether giving birth, raising the next generation, creating a healthy eco-system for a family. So why not accommodate them in work places and give them equal opportunity to compete with their male counterparts ?
Today topic of economic growth revolves around women empowerment as they represent 45% of the population. So there cannot be development without their involvement. Economic empowerment allows women to control and benefit from resources, assets, and income. It also aids the ability to manage risk and improve women's well-being. Women empowerment helps boost women's status through literacy, education, training and awareness creation. Women's empowerment refers to women's ability to make strategic life choices that had been previously denied them.
Today women play a vital role in managing the economy of a family - feeding and educating her children and keep the family going. So in let’slive we are very society conscious and hence we wanted to give every opportunity to a woman where it helps us in our business and also provides them a livelihood. And we wanted them to do this right from their home.
We in Let’sLive are conscious about the climate change that is affecting our daily lives. We wanted to make a small difference in the way we do business, so we decided to avoid plastics at any cost. The main part of the online shopping is the packaging that delivers our products safely to our homes. The products are wrapped with lots of plastics and other materials that are harmful to nature. As more and more people are getting accustomed to shopping from home, this becomes a menace. So let us look at some of the statistics:
Total women population in India - 441,323,310
Total women population in Tamil Nadu - 3.44 crores
Tamil Nadu ranked higher in gender wise employable population consisting of 50 per cent men and 67 per cent women, it stated, adding similar trends were visible in nation-wide statistics for men-women employable workforce with 40 per cent women scoring 60 per cent and above in comparison to 36 per cent men.
Among the states in India, Tamilnadu stands first in having a maximum number of successful women entrepreneurs.
Tamilnadu’s percentage of women entrepreneurs is 13.51%. Kerala stands next to Tamilnadu with a women entrepreneurship percentage of 11.35%. Next comes Andhra Pradesh. Andhra’s percentage of women entrepreneurs is 10.56%. The fourth and fifth places are held by West Bengal and Maharashtra, whose percentages of women entrepreneurs are 10.33 and 8.25, respectively.
With having such wide base of women population who are eager to learn, work and eventually start their own business is an ideal recipe for getting motivated workforce. All they needed is the right training and direction. So keeping this in mind, we started to employ them as freelancers who were given adequate training and the work was required to be done from home itself. So, let’s live came up with a unique concept of cushioning all our bottles with banana fiber.
So why did we choose banana fibers ? - Because banana plantation is in abundance in Coimbatore and surrounding areas. So, our team of anti-pollution enthusiasts, decided to use the banana stem waste into an useful product. Banana fiber is one of the strongest fiber available in nature. Once you pack few fibers together, they give enough strength to withstand and type of stress during transportation. Using this to our advantage, we sought out for women who were rolling beedies and wanted to get out of it. They were already used to rolling tobacco, so this was a no brainer for them. It hardly took them 2 hours to learn the process and they were ready to rock !
We started with one village two women in Panruti as a model. Today we employ more than 20 women in and around villages of coimbatore turning banana fiber waste into an ecologically friendly, disposable packaging cushions.
Today Let’sLive is selling around 20 food items, which are packaged in glass bottles and shipped all over India. We use various transport means to ship our goods which require heavy packaging cushions for which we would be wrapping around each bottle with atleast a meter of plastic bubble wraps. But instead we do the same with the banana fiber. Our team is extremely happy to bring about this kind of solution, so that others will follow suit.
Today we are exploring packaging solutions with more than 10 different plantations. Hopefully we will have cost effective, ecologically friendly solution in a year’s time. With bringing out all these different solutions, we need to engage the women folks, who have an ingenious way of creating the necessary solutions to our challenges.
To give a complete view of end to end production process of packaging using banana fiber, kindly watch the video below
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_taXBrJENU
https://youtube.com/shorts/gDp6B4s33Ik
About Let’sLive
Let’sLive is a social empowerment enterprise committed to enhancing and improving the livelihoods of tribal and farming communities. We work directly with small-scale farmers so that our customers can get access to products that are natural, pristine, and picked from the lap of nature. We encourage and provide advice for practicing ethical farming and eco-friendly methods to all those who partner with us.
At Let'sLive we are passionate about bringing in 100% all-natural and healthy products directly from the farming and tribal communities to your doorstep like Pure Raw Honey, Traditional varieties of rice, etc. We want our consumers to enjoy and have direct access to the products that are pristine and picked directly from the lap of nature. The mandates by which we operate are:
* Value every life around us by encouraging ethical farming
* Leverage local knowledge and promote legacy harvesting practices with high hygienic standards
* No preservatives or artificial processing on any of our products
* Each product can be traced to its origins and the people involved in its making
* Educate consumers on the importance of consuming rich and natural local produce
To shop and experience the packaging, please visit our website