Transforming communities through Social Entrepreneurship | Mr. Wasudev Mishra | TEDxAmbazariLake
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCWgfM1ZTug Video ID: nCWgfM1ZTug ============================================================ [Music] foreign [Applause] good evening everyone I am little bit nervous but I am a social entrepreneur my job is to solve Global level social problems with modern level Solutions and that's where we bring societal change and that's where we call such people as young change makers today I am here to share a story with you and that story starts with the questions I would like you guys to read raise your hands once I ask you the question how many of you can stay hungry for a day how about two days three days can you do five yeah most of the hands are down what if let me ask you another question what if I tell you that people stay hungry for five days more than five days on a regular basis in just in our neighborhood this is where that Story begins I come from a very small town called pulgao This is in wardha District of state of Maharashtra I have been brought up there in a very humble community one day my mother and or made at her house were having a conversation this conversation starts with do you know does this lady in our neighborhood has not been eating food or having any meal at her place so my mom asked why so she was saving enough money to take her daughter to a hospital when I got to know about this I asked my mother why such things happen why is that lady is hungry for five days and why we can't help her so she asked me a question how long can you help her will you be able to feed her for the entire month then what so that quizzed me and that made me uncomfortable made me Restless for the entire day so what I did I tried staying hungry for a day keeping a choice that there is no food at the end of the day by evening seven o'clock I was going to fall faint I was not feeling good I was not feeling comfortable and at that moment I realized how hunger feels like and that is where it made me move to start the initiative called saligram I asked my mother for the same what can we do for these ladies or these families in our community so she said I have been training them for the last 17 years in stitching in beauty parlor courses and Vocational courses but the problem is where do they find the livelihood for it we are a very small town a town of 30 to 40 000 people where opportunities are very limited now the story proceeds where we try to find a solution in our own neighborhood we call these women in our neighborhood to come at our place and we asked a question would you be able to work with us if we come up with a solution and they immediately agreed because they also knew how hunger means how they how they want to pitch in in their own families to solve this problem so at that moment in 2018 Maharashtra State recently banned single-use Plastics so we thought of let's why not create cloth bags to provide it in market and we will be able to create opportunities for these ladies and that story began there we started stitching cloth bags but it did not end up there we got our first order of 100 bags to be shipped to Bombay where five ladies completed that order but I came up I came up to an article do you even know how much of water does it take to manufacture a t-shirt which you are wearing today or a garment that you're wearing today it takes 17 000 liters of water to manufacture one single t-shirt when I got to know about how textile is so not environmental friendly that quizzed me again am I doing a right right job am I hurting the environment at the same time helping other people and that made us again Restless when I brought this fact in front of my ladies and people so our ladies were like plastic bags harmful if we make bags from new fabric one of my friends from my Exchange program got in touch with me when she got to know from Facebook that we have started making cloth bags from this initiative they run a garment Factory in Bombay and they Supply garments ready-made garments they manufacture garments for major Brands which you find it in our regular malls they came up with a very specific and very weird ask what if we provide you Fabric in kgs in kilograms and why not you prepare cholas for us a cloth bags we were puzzled because we never worked in bits of pieces of cloths we did not even know what kind of fabric is that but they said this is a problem to us how can be a new fabric which is being used for Branded clothes be a problem for some industry they later explained that for every 1000 t-shirt we have 100 to 150 kgs of fabric each kg have 8 meters of fabric going waste at side cuts leftover materials and bits we again sat we the entire team came back and I table this in front of them our team said sir if we get this fabric we can make millions of things out of it and that's where the entire idea of bringing a circular economy and providing livelihood in rural areas started that's where the real story of sligram started the outfit today that you see what I'm wearing is made up from waste fabric which we have collected six months ago from a garment Factory more than 70 percent of my wardrobe or 70 percent of the clothes that I wear are now made of from waste fabric I do not buy new Fabric or I do not buy new clothes directly from a shop this is because I believe that the waste that we are collecting is a huge resource and we are equally responsible we have a duty that we should be taking care of the environment and giving back to the society at the same time we started with first 100 kgs of fabric we started processing that fabric into different sizes different colors different designs and later ended up turning your entire facility of 25 machines and a 400 square feet area into an upcycling Center and the art we call it as upcycling let me give you a quick brief how this entire thing works we take fabric from garment factories that lands in our workstation Our Ladies separate segregate this fabric as per their quality as per their length as per their designs and later on that fabric is put up in an inventory now this is an interesting story which goes we have a small section in our inventory store which we call as a design lab every woman at our place is enabled and made to sit in that lab every day so they she can try test Stitch new things from those bits and pieces of fabric this what I'm wearing is one of the products of the Design Lab which came out of that particular place we ended up innovating coming up with 17 life helping products out of that Design Lab which goes into a regular market and those products help our ladies to earn their bread every day the story doesn't end here we at our place we not only upcycle the fabric but we make sure whatever is being used in our inventory whatever being used in our production is either waste or it has been sourced from a ethical place and our practices are ethical too we help companies to become zero waste companies by our practices and by our impact today we are more than we are a team of more than 50 ladies directly and indirectly working for this entire idea we at the library are working towards a circular economy model where we want to enable rural communities to become sustainable to become self-reliant and this can only happen when women are provided with these opportunities my mother and the entire team believe that women do not need to be empowered I am a product I I am a product of women who have enabled me to stand here today they are the PowerHouse of what I am talking about today this is not just my mother my sister and the ladies who work at our Workstation the power of women working at a place is something much different than what we see it in a regular corporate or daily lives and we have been envisioning we have been having a life Testament of it when you see a ladies working at our Center we have been able to enable these women and not just in their skills but also in their livelihood and also give a direct access to our today's Financial system we all know that how the idea of a self-help group we call as a pachatgar works in the rural areas where these women gather together they do activities they do Financial activities to sustain their lives by getting micro loans by getting financial assistance for their families but when we started siligram we made sure that whatever they earn is ethical is up to the market standards and whatever the money that is being generated goes directly to their bank accounts this enabled these ladies to get direct credit from the banks to sustain their lives to start their own initiatives we as an initiative are looking forward to bring this change to a next system level I have been inducted by Ashoka as a young change maker for this co-leading idea where this can be taken up as a idea which can bring system level change today we have so many Global level structural conflicts or we call as problems such as poverty such as hunger such as unemployment but the Testament that we have been working on since last four years has proven that these structural conflicts can be resolved can be solved can be given a new phase with this solution that we have been working on and we believe if you provide a livelihood to anybody he can stand he or she can stand on their own feet they can sustain an entire Community not just their family I have been personally working closely working with these ladies when uh when we started siligram we started with five ladies and every ladies come up with their own story that one human being who works at her place has a story whether it is about their hardships whether it is about their childhood whether it is about their culture customs that they follow at their places and each story motivates us motivates other and this we want to continue as an initiative in not only just in Maharashtra but in the entire country of India today I believe that if we join hands as change makers to bring such Solutions in our society we can move mountains and bigger problems like poverty can be solved thank you very much once again thank you foreign