Women Masons-Steady Empowerment Drive

Since Society for Education and Village Improvement had existing skill experience in ferrocement technology, it was logical to use the technology for application in the area of sanitation as pre-fabricated by women masons. Society for Education and Village Improvement promotes prefabricated ferrocement circular toilets as mounded by women and finds widespread use. Society for Education and Village Improvement teams took up the challenge and developed prefabricated ferrocement toilet blocks.

For a training program, to be organized by prison department in Central prison premises, four circular types of Ferro cement toilets and five rat-trap bond bath rooms were constructed in a day in Trichy. Ms.Jayabharathi,Prison Supt.Trichy Central Prison inspected the progress of  this Ferro cement toilets erection process completed within 24 hours and said “Success depends upon — efficiency, participation with diligence, perseverance, cooperation, unity, confidence-winning, decision-making, hard work, forbearance, and honesty of the team executed the works,”

Since Society for Education and Village Improvement established, the SEVAI Rural Technology centre has been involved in upgrading traditional technologies as well as developing new ones that are versatile enough to meet the needs of rural communities. Building technology centre Established by SEVAI in Sirugamani is promoting Low Cost Housing Technologies and is providing its Technical Advice and Guidance services to the SHGs and target youth population for enabling them to construct the houses at a cost-effective outlay. Promote and propagate environmentally sound rural appropriate technologies thereby strengthening the capability of rural poor communities’ especially empowering women to respond to their basic needs by creating better options and opportunities to improve the livelihood and upgrade the socio economic condition of the rural population. Rural Technology Centre has been involved in upgrading traditional technologies as well as developing new ones that are versatile enough to meet the needs of rural communities. Some of these include solar powered cookers, improved latrines and water mains, briquettes made from unwanted biomass, and solar food dryers. Much of the technology is either locally developed or adapted to suit rural conditions.RTC also goes to the local areas to teach people how to use the equipment on these technologies. Technologies are taken up for dissemination only after sufficient field trials for economic viability and environmental sustainability have been conducted. Field level monitoring of our programs is undertaken by this organizational set up, which also ensures the continuity of our dissemination practices. The public is informed of our programs. Over the years, SEVAI has conducted a number of training programmes in the following areas. Society for Education and Village Improvement had launched female masonry as a pilot effort to meet the rising labour demand for rural infrastructure. Where masonry skills in rural areas were handed down as oral tradition to the family members, training under Society for Education and Village Improvement have a scientific outlook, with ratio of mixture, centering and plastering taught to women, Society for Education and Village Improvement proposes to impart masonry training in other areas. Women were absorbed through Panchayat-Level Federations after information circulated through self help groups. Masonry training is remunerative as it could fetch Rs.200 as a day's wage. For 2010-11, over 750 women and men within the age group of 18 to 35 years were provided employment-oriented, skill-based training. With the progress of beneficiary enumeration for the rural housing masonry any rural woman, irrespective of caste, class, ethnicity, age and educational qualification can be trained and they can work as a rural professional. Through experience, men have been usually found to be untrainable as they are restless, impatient, ambitious and compulsively mobile, and they all want certificates after training. Once they are trained and have a certificate in hand, they tend to leave their native villages and migrate to cities. Since women trainees have a solid base with a home and family in the village, they are usually not interested in migrating to cities and certificates are of no value to them. The Society for Education and Village Improvement, Trichy believes that certificates issued by training institutes, are one of the major reasons for migration to the cities.EtNS.