SEVAI/ELLE/OFI promoted Women Self Help Groups involved in rope making are self-employed with healthier returns.

SHG Woman operates the Rope making machine

The SEVAI/ELLE/OFI promoted Women Self Help Groups involved in rope making are self-employed with healthier returns. The SEVAI/ELLE Promoted Women Self Help Group Members of K.N.Palayam by the producing coir rope making and sell them whole sale and retails marketing. Coir fibres are found between the hard, internal shell and the outer coat of a coconut. The individual fiber cells are narrow and hollow, with thick walls made of cellulose. They are pale when immature, but later become hardened and yellowed. .Brown coir harvested from fully ripened coconuts is thick, strong and has high abrasion resistance. It is typically used for making ropes and also for mats, brushes and sacking. Coir, seed-hair fibre is obtained from the outer shell of the coconut with or without retting. The processed fibres, ranging from about 10 to 30 centimeters in length, are light in weight, brittle, strong, and elastic, with a tendency to curl. They are resistant to abrasion and they are also used to make brushes, are woven into matting, and are spun into yarns for marine cordage and fishnets. Mature brown coir fibres contain more lignin and stronger but less flexible. The coir fibre is relatively waterproof, and is one of the few natural fibres resistant to damage by saltwater and fresh water is used to process brown coir.SEVAI/OFI/ELLE Promoted Women Self Help Groups involved in rope making are self-employed. The income they earn from selling the fiber rope is the source of their livelihoods. Currently the women Self Help Group members

Rope  getting ready for bundling

use the simple machine operated rope making device and this process enables the groups to improve the potentiality for increasing production and productivity of ropes and the associated items.SEVAI arranged this women self help groups the entrepreneurship training and facilitated to function as a self help group. The training motivated the women to strengthen the women self help group and develop rope making as a rural enterprise for their sustainable livelihoods and improved the production efficiency of the rope production enterprise. The impacts of training and technology have been fairly significant to that their production efficiency has been increased. The individual income level has greater than before and now per capita income is Rs.5000 per month which is very much above the poverty line. The members of SHG at present promoted house hold kitchen gardening and send the children to schools regularly and the village health level has significantly improved. The experience of K.N.Palayam Women self help groups in coir rope making  as an entrepreneur should be a many folded factors approach  such as replicating skills, finance, technology with the  effective combination of all essential factors required for an enterprise. -Govin