Interning in India

So I figure I should say something about my internship aside from the fact that I work Saturdays...which I really don't mind. And I will say that I was given the option of not coming in & having a two-day weekend, but for the sake of cross-cultural immersion, count me in.

rangSutra (the website only talks about their Rajasthan division) was started in August/September through a grant given by the UNDP and Ikea. They work in two rural districts in Uttar Pradesh, outside of Varanasi on women's empowerment through business initiatives. The grant is for a 3-year pilot program that they are hoping to replicate in rural districts throughout eastern U.P., making it a sustainable business and development model. The UNDP/Ikea grant created women's empowerment and self-help groups that run savings and credit programs, village workshops, and campaigns about issues facing their lives. RangSutra focuses on using the traditional craft skills that the women have through capacity building initiatives including organizational building, management training, product development/marketing, and skills training to gain access to western consumer markets.

For the first two weeks of my internship, I'll mainly be working on building a big list of potential western companies for them to partner with in the future. I'll also be working on getting them organic cotton & fair trade certified.

Then, I'll be living in their artisan's villages for two weeks doing fieldwork for them. I'm going to be talking to them about how they think the business model can be improved on the village level, what challenges they face, and what they think about the future of the company. When my boss Dipti told me she wanted me to do this last week, I very quickly said I would, even though I was (and still am) nervous about it. Mainly because of the language barrier, but she said I'll have access to translators. Plus, non-verbal communication is equally important for rapport building. And Dipti keeps telling me that all the women are nice. It'll be a challenge, but will also be really u fieldwork experience.

When I finish in the villages, I'll be back in the office for a week preparing a final report for them. At this point I should also have some ideas about their U.P. branch's specific brand identity and how they can incorporate that in to rangSutra as a whole.

Tomorrow we're going to one of the villages I'll be working in, and I'll get to meet one of the women who will be hosting me, so I'm sure that will put me at ease. I'm really excited that Dipti and Natasha, the business & accounts manager, are letting me come with them.

I've definitely learned a lot already about the amount of fair trade retailers out there...before starting this research I thought that companies like Ten Thousand Villages were basically the only fair trade retailers. Wrong. Though they are the only national one I've found so far, I've found tons of great small retail outlets. And partnerships between small businesses, in my opinion, speak more to the values of fair trade. I've also learned a bit about organic/fair trade cotton production in India, since they're looking for organic cotton suppliers. Did you know that Gujarat produces a lot of organic cotton? I didn't, and I lived there for a month.