Utkal Alumina involves itself in empowering women of Rayagada

Utkal Alumina, a unit of the Aditya Birla Group has been promoting ’Maa Ganga Devi’, a self-help group (SHG). It helps village women in Kucheipadar and Dwimundi villages in Kashipur block , Rayagada district get training to start small businesses. They get a sum of Rs. 18,000 as initial working capital to open a grocery shop. Today, village women can earn Rs. 2,000 a month from grocery shops and live a life of dignity.

Many other women from Kucheipadar and Dwimundi villages in Kashipur block have benefitted from the SHG promoted by Utkal Alumina. These women were mostly illiterate and had neither the skills nor the courage to start something on their own. But Utkal Alumina has brought a ray of light into their lives.

Apart from imparting training, Utkal Alumina has conducted gradation of SHGs for credit linkages. Currently, these 15 SHGs have a corpus of around Rs.9 lakh. Of these 15, five have been linked for credit with banks for an amount of Rs. 7,10,000. The loans thus taken by the members from SHGs have been used for both consumption and income generation purposes. Utkal Alumina has also given job opportunities to educated women from neighbouring areas. According to Mr. Chitrasen Naik, Senior Executive of the Displaced Persons and Project Affected Persons (DP&PAP) Association, before Utkal Alumina arrived nobody was aware of the benefits of forming SHGs. The company went from place to place making women aware of its benefits, imparting training, giving people income-generation ideas and thus contributing to their betterment. “The company has rendered a tremendous amount of help. Not only this, Utkal Alumina has also taken several measures on the CSR front in terms of infrastructure development, education and capacity building, health and family welfare for the people of this region.”

Speaking about the program, Mr. Rajesh Jha, the CEO and MD of Utkal Alumina says, “We are concerned about the welfare of women from this region and by promoting the SHGs we want to imbibe a sense of entrepreneurship and independence so that they can live with pride and dignity. We have seen visible progress in this regard in Kashipur block. We are not only promoting SHGs, but are also empowering women to become entrepreneurs by helping them start independent businesses such as poultry farming and tailoring. “

“We will add many more activities in the days to come and our endeavor will be to position the woman in the house as an important earning member of the family. When a woman is empowered, she will make sure that children get schooling and every member of the family gets access to health care and lives a better life in general,” he added.