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Mumbai - Stree Mukti Sanghatana
Stree Mukti Sanghatana (SMS) is a voluntary organization who for many years, have been improving the lives of the women and campaigning for their rights through a wide range of initiatives. These include awareness campaigns, setting up day care centres for the children of working Mums, providing access to healthcare and a family counseling service to name but a few. My main interest was their Parisar Vikas programme which works with women waste pickers in cooperation with Mumbai Municipal council.
The women go through an environmental entrepreneurship programme which helps them to gain skills in organic manure making, gardening, leadership development and formation of cooperatives, etc. The women with their new title of Trained Parisar Bhaginis (TPBs) instead of rag pickers are trained in waste handling, waste collection and composting.
The Parisar Vikas program is trying to create a ‘Zero Waste’ environment in the city, a tall order but one that has to be admired. They are working towards developing new techniques for the treatment of waste and help the workers to get good prices for the recyclables that they collect.
I was lucky enough to meet Jyoti Mhapshekar, a truly inspiring and well educated lady that gave up her job as a librarian to work towards improving conditions for women. She gave up some of her valuable time to talk to me about the work of SMS then arranged for me to visit some composting sites, a ’shop’ where recyclable waste is purchased and finally a small bio gas plant at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences.
see Mumbai - Bio Gas blog for more details.
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Mumbai looks great
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