For B Sangeeta Kachhua, a young woman from a financially weak background in Kerketta village of Odisha's Sundargarh district, leading a self-sustained life was a distant dream.
Her efforts for a constant source of sustainable income was not yielding results until she came to know about the success stories of Women Resource Centres (WRC) being set up by Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP).
Under the Project Kishori, a flagship Corporate Social Responsibility initiative of RSP, many a rural women found a way for self sustenance as well as being an agent of change in their community.
The aim of the Women Resource Centres is to empower young women by training them in various income generation activities, enhancing their self esteem, making them conscious of health and hygiene as well as about their social and legal rights, a senior RSP official said.
RSP has already established 40 Women Resource Centres in various villages under the four Revenue blocks of Nuagaon, Lathikata, Bisra and Kuarmunda. In the current year, plans are afoot to set up 10 more WRCs in villages from Suidih and Khuntgaon Panchayats of Lathikata and Nuagaon Blocks respectively, he said.
Initially, 70 women from these villages were imparted training in basic skills required for running the centres at the Institute for Periphery Development of RSP recently, another official said.
The trainees were taught about the objective of the programme, need of group unity, leadership and the concept of women resource centre. This training would help in the selection of master trainers who in the long run would be responsible for imparting training at the community level.
This programme also aimed at the optimal utilisation of available resources to provide a means of livelihood to these rural women.
Project Kishori which has been one of the most successful CSR ventures of RSP, is being implemented in collaboration with Society for Rural Industrialization (SRI), a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) from Ranchi.
