Gadchiroli : In a bid to further provide scientific training and impart methodical training to women from Maldugi village of Gadchiroli district. Maharashtra Village Social Transformation Foundation in association under the guidance Maharashtra State Khadi and Industries Board organised two-day workshop at Mahabaleshwarhill station of Satara district.
MVSTF under MSRLM (Maharashtra State Rural Livelihood Mission) program established a honey processing unit six months back and also managed to create a brand. After a lot of efforts from the Chief Minister Rural Development Fellow (CMRDF) and a dedicated and honest response from the ten women from the Self-Help Group (Bachat Gat) a new natural honey brand came to birth that too in a remote village – Maldugi. The honey brand is named ‘Ecovan’ currently sold at local market place by the women farmer producer company which is also co-op shop. In a bid to further encourage the SHG women and also to further take the initiative ahead, special two-day training program was held at Mahabaleshwar. MVSTF in association with and under the guidance Maharashtra State Khadi and Industries Board organized the program for ten women from the village.
The main objective of the workshop was to further hone their skills and further impart training which is scientific and methodical in nature. The women were taught BEE farming techniques. As part of the program Mr R.P. Narayankar Research Officer and Mr. Mahadik, Supervisor of Maharashtra State Khadi and Industries Board, spoke about institute history and how Bee farming they have done from last many years.Mr. Mahadik had a brief discussion on concept of Bee farming and why it is important and how it can generate employment opportunities as well as good income source. He explained about different types of Honey bees which are present for honey bee farming.
They were also taken to forest area where Bee farming cages were kept in order to make BEE colonies. Mr. Naryankar Research Officer explained how colonies are formed, and how honey workers collect the honey from the forest from nearby 2 to 3 Km areas, and how they come back to their cage. Why queen is required to trap first and then only honey bee colonies are being formed.The women’s group also visited honey processing unit plant where honey was filtered and moisture content was removed from the raw honey. The women also visited the packaging and labelling process unit to understand the end process of packaging.
Post the workshop MVSTF is all set to scale up the project. As a next step the main focus is to set up a post processing unit in the village. The unit will be majorly set up to make the end product refined and market ready. Due to weather variance and due to type of the bees there is a lot of moisture in the extracted honey from the respective village. The processing unit will further filter and remove moisture to make it refined and market ready.
The best news for the villagers is that, apart from honey bee post processing the unit can be used by villagers and farmers to increase the post productivity of their farm produce which would further refine their products. “The funding will come very soon through MVSTF funds for special initiatives and I we are confident that this unit will indeed change the way the framers and the farming community look at refining their products in process processing system to make their farm produce market ready. As per the estimation the unit would cost close to Rs, 2,0,0000 (Two Lakh Rupees)and we are more than excited that more people from the village would come forward to avail the facility for their own benefit,” said Chief Minister Rural Development Fellow (CMRDF – Gram Parivartak), the one who fore fronted the project and was the brain behind the initiative.
(ही बातमी मराठीतून वाचण्यासाठी येथे क्लिक करा.)
