Loyola Joseph Director,FOOD, Chennai,India

What we learnt from our experience is that while the rich have financial capital for promoting their enterprise, the poor need to promote social solidarity and social capital so that they can raise their economic condition.

‘The Foundation of Occupational Development (FOOD), based in Chennai, India, began the Inter-City Marketing Network project in April 2001 to help poor women in urban areas increase their incomes. FOOD worked initially with some 100 existing women’s selfhelp groups representing between 1,000–2,000 women and their families. An initial survey of these groups indicated that while many women derived a small income from producing goods at home (food products, soap, repackaged food items), they were generally weak at marketing their products and finding customers. Typically, they sold their products to visiting middlemen and made little profit from their work. FOOD provided training in marketing and the use of “social capital,” encouraging these groups to focus on production, marketing, or both. It also provided each group with a cell phone to facilitate contact between production and marketing groups, and between groups and customers. This is a simple way of applying widely available telecommunication technologies to a traditional micro-enterprise sector with a very high proportion of women’s participation. While the cell phones were initially provided by the project, today all groups buy their own phones and pay for all calling charges. The target groups comprise of the local female artisans and semi-skilled workers who are currently living below the poverty line in and near Chennai.

Context
During field visits to various cities of Tamil Nadu conducted by FOOD staff, we observed that each city has its own set of products that are manufactured using indigenous skills. Most of these products are made with locally available materials and the skills available in production, are seldom found in other cities.

Although, the majority of the community is a part of CBO, due to lack of communication link between CBOs, we observed that the producers are dependent on middlemen for marketing their produce outside their local area. This reduces the community’s earnings even though their products are of very good quality.

The other major set back in the cultural system in this part of the country is that women are seldom allowed to go out of the house to sell their products to the public. Due to this, the skilled women workers are discouraged from making use of their creative and entrepreneurial skills.

What we set out to do…
The goals of the network are to link women micro-entrepreneurs from different urban areas in order to exchange goods and develop new markets for their products. The groups trade in over 100 basic products, including soap, cooking oil, washing powder. Communication between the groups is maintained through mobile phones which are used to receive and place orders for goods with other groups in the network, and to compare prices across the region. This would lead in utilisation of ICT as a tool for social and economic development of the poor especially women. This would not only improve the cash flow within the community increasing the income of women thus reducing poverty, but also create direct market for the products made by women groups. It would further build the capacity of women entrepreneurs.

The evaluation process
The evaluation process was primarily in the form of collection of stories from the community before the project starts (i.e. their practical problems, needs etc) utilising Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) and then interpreting them into specific issues faced by the community. Then during and after the projects regular interviews were conducted to collect more stories (i.e. accounts from the community detailing whether the marketing network has made a difference to their day to day life) and then interpret them to enable the project to determine the success or failure rates.

Results
Marketing in the network is based on the concept of social capital. Individual women are encouraged to foster good relationships with the family and friends to build a strong network of customers. The producer groups distribute their products to marketing groups via small and large trading meetings along with mobile communication. This has resulted in enabling the women to increase the profit margins, increase their volume of sales, and extend their marketing reach into new urban areas. Active network members started earning a profit of between US $ 10- 40 per month from their part time job. This income represents 10-15 percent of total family income and enables many members to pay school fees. More than 300 groups are now involved in the network.

Lessons learnt
What we learnt from our experience is that while the rich have financial capital for promoting their enterprise, the poor need to promote social solidarity and social capital so that they can improve their economic conditions and standards of living. One of the best ways to build social solidarity is through community networking. Since the cell phone does not require much of functional literacy to operate and maintain, the community need not undergo extensive training or learn an unknown language in order to network.

The use of cell phones has allowed the women groups to expand their reach and extend their activities to areas where they did not have a presence earlier. Before the start of this project, most of the production groups were restricting themselves to marketing their products either in their neighborhood or selling it to middlemen for a low price. Using cell phones the production groups are now able to conduct business with groups in other cities or areas, which was hitherto inaccessible to them.