Livelihood Development 

Across all the project locations in Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh states, Myrada supported rural communities for livelihood development through strengthening agriculture, empowering women in various govt. schemes, entrepreneurship and job skills, financial inclusion through Self-help affinity group formation and credit linkages with financial institutions for income generation activities. Non-farm-based income generation activities such as petty shops, cattle rearing, poultry, kirana shops, tailoring business etc. were promoted. Following were some of the achievements in the sustainable livelihood development programs of the year.

In Chamarajanagar, Gulbarga, Bidar and Raichur Districts in Karnataka state, “Internet Saathi” a digital literacy program was implemented in 1220 villages with the support of Voice Foundation. The program has contributed towards bridging the digital gender divide by empowering 422 women Saathis to become more confident and act as key source of information for their village communities. These trained Saathis conducted digital training to women in the rural villages using android mobile phones. People in the villages approached Saathis to help children with school work, to learn new cooking recipes, search for jobs or to run a business through mobile phone applications. The project noticed women engaged in tailoring business could access new designs in embroidery work, new blouse designs, making of foot mats, jute bags, and handicrafts via YouTube.

Kadiri in Andhra Pradesh and Kolar in Karnataka promoted millet crop cultivation in dry land agriculture by adopting improved agronomic practices. As millet is a major food grain consumed by the rural communities, the project took an initiative to create awareness among farmers on different varieties of millet crops cultivation towards increased yield and income and provided technical capacity building training to 725 farmers. Earlier the major crops cultivated in their dry land were groundnut and pulses but due to less rainfall and drought the farmers incurred loss every year.

Different types of millets such as finger millet, little millet, foxtail millet; brown top millet, sorghum and variga and oil seed such as castor were identified as cash crops and suggested to the farmers. Necessary demonstrations were conducted in their field, quality seeds and technical guidance provided and farmers were educated about the benefits in cultivating millets.

Apart from agriculture, communities were encouraged to take up off farm- based income generation activities and skill trainings were conducted on enterprise creation, entrepreneurship and marketing skills etc. The required financial support was provided through the project fund and also arranged through bank credit linkages. A total of 187 families were supported in rearing livestock across Kadiri, Guntur, Gulbarga, Bidar and Raichur projects.

Women and youth were trained in different job skills like masonry, electrical wiring, driving, tailoring, carpentry, computer skills and generated employment through setting up small and micro enterprises and some are employed outside with private entrepreneurs and shops.  Myrada Chitradurga project imparted job skills training with the support of Godrej & Boyce resulting in 206 youth from Chitradurga, Bidar, Raichur, Bellary, Kolar and Chamarajanagar districts being trained in carpentry skills. Out of this, 128 opted for self-employment while 78 got salaried jobs.

Highlights :

• Amount worth of Rs. 4.6 million was invested for supporting 187 rural poor families in livestock development like sheep, cow and buffalo (one animal per family) as an income generation
• 4600 farmers were supported with different agriculture inputs like quality seeds, micro nutrients, and azolla cultivation along with required technical guidance.

• 1950 men and 956 women were facilitated in basic computer, masonry, carpentry, driving, and electrical wiring, bee keeping and tailoring

• 470 rural women were supported to setup income generation activities like tailoring, petty shop, flour mill, rotti making machine, poultry etc., and began earning a monthly income from 3000/- to 6000/- per

• Around Rs. 19 million was mobilized as savings in 2019-2020 from the members of 2100 SAGs and utilized for the financial needs of the members through micro

Case story – Goat rearing – Bidar District :  

Chandrakala’s family’s main occupation is agriculture labour work and along with her husband they earn around 8000/- per month depending on work availability. She has 4 daughters and 2 sons. Except her 2 elder daughters others have studied up to 10th grade.

Chandrakala is a member in one of the SAGs functioning in her village for the last 4 years. She is an active member and never misses any meetings and trainings conducted by the group.

Chandrakala came to know about the financial support provided by the SAG federation functioning in her village for Income Generation Activities and submitted request for financial assistance.

Her request was approved and she attended a training program on income generation activities organized by the project staff. She came up with an idea of goat rearing, received Rs.6400/- as loan, invested another Rs.2000/- of her own money and bought a goat. Very soon the goat yielded 3 kids and she felt very happy. As per the pre-condition of the SAGs Federation the first kid was given to the goat bank run by it.

Chandrakala would like to augment income by rearing more goats to get additional income through which her daughters could get married with good status in the society. She is confident that she will achieve her goal.