Jute: an eco-friendly alternative for a sustainable future
Brief Description
The SWITCH-Asia 'Jute: an eco-friendly alternative for a sustainable future' project seeks to ensure that there is a positive environmental and economic impact of the jute sector on its workers, producers, farmers and the consumer by encouraging a switch to more environmentally sustainable practices in the jute industry.
This is a multi-country project, covering entire Bangladesh and West Bengal, India. The project will encourage sustainable production and consumption of eco-friendly jute diversified products (JDP) in Bangladesh and India and will focus on increasing awareness of SCP practices, improving business capacity to produce more market-driven products, ensure that service providers have the right set of skills to work with SMEs, establish a match making service through Business Facilitation Units to support sustainable service provision, and campaign for increasing demand for eco-friendly products as well as supportive policies for the sector.
The project is running on its second year and arranging trainings for the Service Providers. The main project activities include building capacity of local service providers, training JDP SMEs to produce market driven products, encouraging the government to develop relevant policies, while working with consumers to get them to buy more eco-friendly products. The project will work first with 60 JDP SMEs and 30 Service Providers then the learnings will be replicated to another 440 SMEs. The project will work both on the supply and demand side.
This project seeks to benefit at least 500 SMEs, their 25000 workers and their family members.
News
Training of Service Providers (SPs): In to the Market
The Market Access Training workshop was held from September 27 to October
01, 2011 in Bangladesh. 19 SPs participated in the workshop and it was conducted
by George Williams, Business Consultant, Traidcraft UK's Development Support Unit.
On the last day as a local successful JDP producer Mr. Rashedul Karim Munna, Managing Director of Creation Private Limited, presented Bangladesh perspective on Market Access. He shared his practical relevant experience on how he started his JDP business and how to explore market.
Selection of Service Providers (SPs)
Based on assessment 16 Service Providers were selected in this month. In total 29 SPs were selected in Bangladesh. Based on assessment 22 Service Providers were selected in this month. Only 16 remained till the end of the first workshop of service providers in India.
1st Phase Training
In Bangladesh, the five day long training workshop was held from 21st to 25th March, 2011
in Dhaka. Finally 21 Service Providers participated in the training.
In India, the five day long training workshop was held from 28th March to 1st April, 2011 in Kolkata. Finally 16 Service Providers participated in the training.
2nd Phase Training
In Bangladesh, 14 SPs attended the training from July 10 to July 14, 2011 at WINGS training centre, Dhanmondi.
In India, 10 SPs attended the second training programme from 18 to July 22, 2011
at Arya International hotel, Kolkata. This workshop was facilitated by Barbara Scott and Srita Bhol. The workshop covered good service provision and business counseling skills through completion of the coursework with the SMEs just before the workshop.
March, 2011
In Bangladesh, Project Promotion and Study Dissemination Workshop was held on 14th March, 2011. Renowned economist Dr. Qazi Kholiquzzaman Ahmad, Chairman, PKSF and Bangladesh School of Economics, honoured the workshop as Chief Guest and Mr. Jean-Claude Malongo, Attaché, Programme Manager, Economic Cooperation, Delegation of the European Commission to Bangladesh, was there as Special Guest. The event was attended by around one hundred and thirty stakeholders, coming from different sectors, including government sector, private organizations, NGOs, SMEs, Jute mills, etc. The workshop folder, pad, leaflet and the invitation card were printed on jute paper.
July, 2011
In India, Project promotion workshop was conducted on 14 July at Kolkata and a very good response was generated. The government agencies, association and federation bodies,
technical institutes like NIRJAFT, financial institutions like NABARD and RBI, exporters
and traders from the JUTE sector participated in the workshop. The chief guest was Mr Manjul Krishna Thakur, Secy, Ministry of MSME & Textiles.
As a follow up activity of Domestic Market Research (DMR) a Consultative Need Assessment Workshop was held on 15th March 2011 in Kolkata.
In the workshop the findings of the Domestic Market Research were shared. It was day long workshop, in which JDP designers, exporters, representatives from different NGOs and scientists from NIRJAFT participated. Dr. Vinod Shukla, an independent consultant presented the findings, the scientist from NIRJAFT gave their insights about JDPs, JDP enterprise 19s needs and requirements.
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Partner
TX will be responsible for the project management and technical strategic support of this project.
It will be responsible for research SMEs and service providers, advocacy, and more.
TARANGO is responsible for networking with JD SMEs and organising trainings and events.