India: IRRI joins “Consumer and Marketplace Literacy for Women Entrepreneurs”

The Marketplace Literacy Community Trust, an NGO in India that seeks to promote consumer literacy and entrepreneurship amongst the rural poor, conducted training activity for women’s Self Help Groups in Chennai using their innovative video-based marketplace literacy approach.

This approach to helping disadvantaged and marginalized groups was developed by Professor Madhu Viswanathan of the University of Illinois, with whom IRRI is a partner in understanding postharvest needs.

IRRI’s Alfred Schmidley, value chain specialist, and Aanand Kumar, postharvest specialist of the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA), joined the event to learn more about this approach firsthand.

The training, held on 19-21 February 2014, was organized by MLC founder and director R. Venkatasen and his staff, who arranged visits for farmers, millers, and other postharvest chain actors during the visit of Alfred and Aanand.

“This innovative learning approach can be extended to serve postharvest needs and opportunities for women and marginalized farmers as entrepreneurs,” said Alfred. “This could help foster the sustainable adoption of improved postharvest technologies and a better understanding of markets and linkages in the chain.”


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