Great news! In mid-November co-founder Ellen Tacoma signed an agreement for collaboration with Jharcraft. The great inspiration behind Jharcraft is managing director Dhirendra Kumar, who co-signed the agreement. The management team consists of enthusiastic, passionate and inquisitive young people. They all have one common goal: to realize the mission of creating opportunity and changing lives in rural areas.
After the initial introduction, two short films were shown: “The Silent Revolution” and “Incredible Journey”. Ellen then gave a presentation about Women on Wings. As expert Ronald van het Hof enthusiastically explains: “After that everything happened very quickly. The partnership was sealed with the signing and stamping of the contract. All of the management members signed the contract as well. We are all convinced that this partnership is going to be a great success. ” Ronald explains that Jharcraft was well prepared and had already identified a number of potential problem areas. “We visited one of their shops and immediately recognized the problems and pitfalls. They now know what they can work on this month.” Ellen is sure that there are many opportunities to give further input to the mission and for creating jobs for women in the rural areas of the state of Jharkhand. Ellen: “Producers won’t be the problem; the greatest challenge is creating and finding sales opportunities.” Ronald: “It has a lot to do with retail and that makes my heart beat faster. The ideas about concepts, franchising in urban areas and in the countryside have all been discussed. Such energy!”
Following their visit to the shop, Ronald and Ellen gave a short presentation on visual merchandising and explained the design conditions that the new planned shop would have to meet. They also looked at sales figures. Ronald: “They are delighted to be able to get to work straight away. They knew that some aspects needed improvement, but thanks to our advice they can start to move forward. And haven’t they just! An hour later we heard that two people had already been set to work to manage the shop trajectory over the next six months.”
Women on Wings and Jharcraft had a fieldvisit together to Urban Haat (100 km from Ranchi) where a centre of livelihood for artisans and womengroups is established. Training, design development and production of leather, paper, dhokra (brass), textile and bamboo products takes place here. You can see and feel the empowerment of the 12.000 women who are associated with this unique project.
