Rural Immersion Programme: Cashew Program, Swadesh foundation

Abstract

We had the task of meeting up with the current Cashew Project owners. The beneficiaries were located in different parts of Raigad broadly in Mangaon, Mahad and Shrivardhan. The transportation to reach each of these beneficiaries involved either a bus or ‘Tum Tum’. We not only got to interact with the beneficiaries but also with their family members to understand how the business has made a change in their lives. The businesses that were prominent in these villages were farming and poultry. Each of the 3 villages had their own pros and cons in terms of viability to do any business.In most of the villages,reverse migration was observed in high numbers. The young men were moving out to Mumbai or Pune for better employment opportunities.Thus the number of youths were few.But in Mahad, people believed the employment opportunities were really sustainable, hence we saw a lot of youth taking up jobs in these areas and were also open to taking up businesses. The connectivity of these villages to the main city also affected their businesses. Another key learning was how the villagers perceive different occupations and how this affects the decision of a villager to start any business. This learning was of great help to us while crafting solutions to our issues related to the project. Project Brief Our Project brief was to understand and find out the confidence level and conviction for Cashew Enterprise and also study the direct and indirect opportunities it has created.

Description

Rural Immersion Project – Area: Mangaon, Mahad and Shrivardhan, District: Raigad, State: Maharashtra

Keywords

Rural development & problems, study by students

Citation