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Women
entrepreneurship development at Dambadeniya However although both men and women are needed in this effort, there are no signs of direct women involvement in rural development. The role of women must be considered in a different angle as women’s involvement is necessary in enterprise development. It is true that both sexes are playing important roles in the family and social economic development activities but the needs and approaches are different on men/women assessment in their involvement. When we look at the poverty levels, men and women look at it at completely different angles. Women are mostly very serious and broad minded when they look at their poverty but in case of men they are not so serious but very selfish giving priority to fulfilling their own needs. Hence gender sensitive grass root level development activities follow up with correct approaches to meet the needs of women with appropriate time allocation and management at home levels. Links with easy to handle low cost appropriate technology application, utilization of low cost natural resources and raw materials available in their environment would encourage more involvement of women in micro enterprise development and a reasonable price for their products and services. Further the concern of women in health, education and social status within the family circle encourage women to get involved in income generating activities to enhance their efforts in achieving that status. With regard to women-led households such as single, widowed and divorced, it is necessary to generate funds to run the household either through employment or self-employment. Therefore it is well accepted that to meet the challenges through women empowerment, enterprise development is the key factor to enhance their efforts. Most of the micro enterprises at home level depend on individual and neighbouring markets which is low cost and affordable and a good cash flow. As a result more women want to be within this range unless some other institutions in public/private or the NGO sector guide them to reach urban and suburban markets through sustainable and assured linkages. Dambadeniya provides the best model for all these activities having the experience of two decades in achieving its goals in improving the livelihood of underprivileged families living below the poverty level. It is the only place where one could experience the strategies and methodologies applied successfully to operate all these models. The interventions of Dambadeniya towards poverty eradication and livelihood improvement through women empowerment by enterprise development and capacity building is one of the best examples anyone could observe in Sri Lanka. These models approach neighbouring markets with forward contracts with private sector institutions that have shown results so far. The largest women group enterprise, the Dambadeniya Export Product Village (DEPV) established with private sector forward market linkages towards value added packaging for the tea export market has brought them up to the status of the highest income generators in the North Central Province. Having around 3,800 share holders and managed by an elected women board of directors, this project provides the best model for women empowerment through entrepreneurship development and capacity building in Sri Lanka. The role played by the Dambadeniya Development Foundation which is the service arm of the DEPV facilitates and guides small and micro enterprises to reach urban and suburban markets by producing consumer demand products and services through reverse engineering market approaches. This has succeeded in establishing a significant number of women enterprises at village level drawing the attention of many organizations and individuals keen on enterprise development at village level to eradicate poverty and meet the challenges of social and economic development. The significant number of home based industries and micro enterprises to meet consumer demand and requirements of day to day activities too play a major role in women empowerment at village level. A self servicing lending and saving rural economic development programme called Liyasaviya (strength of women) formed by a group of women in Dambadeniya too is actively involved in not only home base enterprise development but also providing required micro credit and other required services such as training and development, appropriate technology transfer and capacity building with the assistance of DDF and other public and private sector service providers in the area. The strategy applied at DDF in implementing the empowerment programme is also a model which could be replicated and applied in other parts of the island in eradicating poverty through women empowerment. The initial approaches in baseline need assessments through face-to-face meetings, participatory group meetings, dialogue with other rural based organizations such as funeral societies, lending organizations and other similar organizations exist within the village as well as through the coordination of intellectuals, village leaders and priests in the area. Networking is carried out with experienced and dedicated field staff of DDF to strengthen the linkages of women groups to share and benefit from each other’s abilities and interests towards all groups and finally the whole women’s network. The networking is vital in the women empowering process as it provides a window for facilitating access to data and information about ongoing activities within and around the market, technology, distribution, procurement of raw material, service providers, pricing and sustainability of all the other related activities to enhance their efforts in achieving their goals. Hence networking within the target group of women is very important in developing women enterprises at all the level. Dambadeniya is proud to announce its success story that has been achieved due to proper leadership and advise from private sector organizations. Sri
Lanka’s biggest women-owned enterprise completes 23 years “The vision of the Dambadeniya Export Production village in making them their own decision makers for a better tomorrow would create more challenges with the changing global environment. The women of Dambadeniya are determined to strengthen their skills and abilities to meet those challenges,” the organization said in a press release. At the moment capacity and mobilizing programmes are being conducted at various levels to empower the women at house hold levels. |
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