Gender & Livelihoods

"TIDE took a conscious approach to involve women in
various stages of the technology"

Gender & Livelihoods

While working with innovative technologies that were not yet gender-stereotyped, TIDE took a conscious approach to involve women in various stages of the technology, right from production to marketing and dissemination. It helped that most of these technologies accomplished one or more of the following :

  • Improve their quality of life
  • Reduced drudgery
  • Saved time
  • Secure livelihoods

But our learning is that Technology is only one aspect of a rural woman’s journey towards entrepreneurship. To initiate rural women into any livelihood, a series of activities around improving their confidence and creating a supportive family and community environment has to be done. TIDE conducts awareness and sensitization sessions for the entire community and gives importance to soft skill building for the women along with technical skills. This approach has resulted in TIDE trained entrepreneurs achieve social and economic empowerment.

Through our women entrepreneurs in the production and marketing of innovative products/technologies, we have demonstrated how technology can change gender roles. TIDE has established a Women’s Technology Park (WTP) with support from the Department of Science & Technology, Government of India and uses this centre as an incubation centre for women’s enterprises. WTP is a 2-acre campus with infrastructure to do awareness and training. The technologies available at WTP are:

  • Solar cum biomass drying of horticultural produce
  • Eco-friendly products from areca leaf sheaths
  • Value-added products from millets
  • Green House and shade net nursery
  • Vermi Composting
  • Smokeless stove construction
  • Brick making

Achievements

335 kitchen gardens in 4 taluks.

5000 seed balls and 300 saplings planted in 20 villages.

497 women days of employment created

10 women trained and certified as stove builders

Ongoing Projects

Completed Projects

Testimonials

Working with TIDE has been quite exciting and insightful. TIDE’s support in undertaking situational analysis of ground realities helped to inform the implementation of project interventions. I would also like to take this opportunity to extend our thanks to TIDE for helping develop the Curriculum for Sustainable Household Energy (SHE) -School which guided the conduction of sessions in this collective learning platform and, capacitating the SHE Technicians as SARALA Improved Cook Stove Master Trainers and further enabling them for NSDC certification.
Wishing TIDE best wishes and success for their work!
Rekha Panigrahi Project Manager, SWITCH Asia-II, CARE India
What struck me about their (TIDE trained women entrepreneurs) approach was the conviction they carry and the confidence with which they interacted with us, answered all our queries. I was amazed to hear “I don’t sell, I only introduce them to the products and its benefits”. Very well trained, congratulations again.
I am much impressed with TIDE and wished to share the above.
K N Sriram OMRC Market Research Company
We, from CST-IISc came to WTP, to learn about TIDE's activities. We witnessed the various trainings like areca plate making, baking and solar drying of tomatoes. We thank TIDE staff for their immense interest in training, production and marketing. The place and office are very impressive.
Somashekhar CST-IISC, Bangalore