Currently Iam working on evolving an effective strategy to improve livelihood opportunities for forest dwellers in the state of Andhra Pradesh. One of the potential areas identified is to make use of the rich availability of bamboo in the forests, especially in Adilabad and East Godavari districts, where Common Faility Centres with required machinery have already been set up. Training of local tribals in making over 40 different varieties of handicrafts has been completed as well. they can now make a mini replica of Eiffel Tower with bamboo in 2-3 days time and it is quite exquisite. The price for the same at source is around Rs.800 (US $ 20). Other popular products include flower boquets (US $ 1) and Cell Phone holders (US $ 1).
India currently has over 200 million cell phone users and even if less than 1% of them do support rural artesans by going for a mobile phone holder (which can mounted on a wall, kept on a table, fixed to the dashboard of a car) made up of bamboo it would immensely help several thousand rural artesans immensely.
Iam also exploring the possibilities of reaching out to overseas markets through sites like peoplink.org
any ideas in taking our plans further would be most welcome
Raghuveer
15th October 2007
(praghuveer84@gmail.com)
Monday, 15 October 2007
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