City Pulse

It is hard to imagine that tetra packs that are so indifferently thrown into the trash can not only be transformed into beautiful jewelry and handicrafts, but also be a vehicle for women empowerment. Devika Krishnan is effortlessly making that transformation possible through her social enterprise, Joy At Work. This 45-year-old, along with her army of enterprising women from urban slums, and migrant workers are converting tetra packs and cement sacks into fashionable products. In the process, they are also making themselves economically independent. 

 

Speaking about her project, Devika says, “Joy At Work is a fledgling enterprise for and by women from Nellurhalli, Whitefield. It is an income generation project where women are being trained in hand skills and business management so they can become an independent for-profit business venture in the next three years.”

 

Devika has a repertoire of experience in creating livelihood groups, and that enabled her to take up a project offered by a local NGO in Bangalore to help young mothers from a slum in becoming economically independent and self-reliant. The success of that project instilled enough confidence in Devika to address urban poverty through empowerment. “A chance offer by a dear friend of her premises at a highly subsidized rent, close to home made me start Joy At Work. Also, the winding down of my previous studio ensured I had enough capital to invest,” adds Devika who graduated from NID in 1992.  

 

 

Joy At Work transforms tetra packs, scrap fabrics and cement sacks into various lifestyle products such as bags, baskets, jewelry, cushions, place mats, among others. “The project is still in its experimentation stage so there will be new products tried and tested every few weeks,” adds Devika, who worked with the renowned Dastkar, Delhi. She was assigned with a project of reviving a local tradition of black fired pottery in a village near Ranthambhore, Rajasthan. 

 

“I’ve been working for Dastkar, Ranthambhore ever since and continue to spend three weeks each year training women in craft skills in villages around the tiger reserve and in expanding existing ranges of products with new designs and techniques,” she says. With that project in place, Devika turned her focus on projects in Bengaluru. In her encounters with young mothers from slums, Devika found out that they had access to tetra packs, and cement bags, given their proximity to garbage dumps and constructions sites. She decided to channelize her previous experiences in Ranthambhore and teach these women embroidery that could be done on cement sacks.  Soon this experiment led to the formation of Joy At work.

 

“We created an awareness of the project through local sales and a well-written feature in our citizen’s forum called Whitefield Rising. We have individuals from different localities here who collect cleaned tetra packs from their homes and neighbourhoods which they drop off at our unit,” says Devika.

 

Before converting them into pieces of art, these packs are washed and wiped with Dettol. “They are then cut and woven or sewn into products,” says the Whitefield resident. “Cement sacks can be sourced in plenty thanks to the current construction frenzy our city is going through,” she points out.

 

The no waste mantra propels the entire enterprise. “The waste bits that are not used in making larger products are woven into beads for our jewelry range. Very little is wasted of the waste we collect,” she adds.

 

Initially, Devika found it hard to retain employees. “Joy At Work started in June, 2013. On the first day, we had 30 women interested in joining. When they learnt there are no freebies and even sewing needles need to be accounted for, we were down to nine in the second month. It went up to 14 women and now there are 10, as a couple left to have babies and two got better employment opportunities as sales assistants in the nearby mall. It is literally the joy we share while at work that spreads the word. We have had to turn away so many eager learners who wished to join us,” she points out.

 

Their core team of eight is now set and trained. “We’ll scale up slowly by getting one woman at a time to introduce a friend. She will train and be accountable for the newcomer till she is trained fully. We then take on more. At 20 - 25 women, the enterprise should be small enough for them to manage and large enough to sustain,” Devika adds.

 

The products are then marketed through neighbourhood sales, personalized orders and a couple of stores in Bangalore and Goa.

 

Even though the employees comprise mainly migrant workers, Devika asserts that attrition has never been a problem. “They have no intention of going back to their hometowns/villages. Their children (who come to the unit after school and play quietly with some lego blocks we’ve provided) speak fluent Kannada and are now attending good schools in the neighbourhood. The only drawback, but am splitting hairs here, really, is that all the women are homeward bound in the summer so we’ve had to shut the unit down in April and May. But this can be worked into the business routine and is a welcome break for all to reflect and start afresh in June so it isn’t a drawback as such,” she says.

 

In spite of its work in the social sphere, Devika vehemently opposes calling Joy At Work an NGO. She asserts that self-reliance is an important goal of her enterprise and charity conflicts with that theory. “I do not believe in charity,” she asserts. “True empowerment can never be achieved unless the beneficiaries learn to stand on their own and pay their taxes they owe to our Government. I believe subsidies, freebies and reservations will never help people get out of their current state of affairs. It’ll only cushion their misery temporarily and delay the process of getting self-reliant and societally equal. So Joy At Work will be a profitable enterprise where all profits will be ploughed back into expanding the business which means the shareholders will not get to keep the profit for themselves,” she explains.

 

 

Along with trying to reduce the perennial problem of garbage disposal, and empowering women from lesser privileged neighbourhoods, Joy At Work also enables building a sisterhood around these products. “The women share their experiences. They help each other out. Problems with water, healthcare, schooling, housing, finance, etc are addressed collectively and they’ve come to realise the potential of working as a group rather than coping with problems individually. Children are looked after by whoever’s free to do so at any given instance. We have potluck lunches where five of us bring food for the rest and have a feast every quarter at the unit. It’s usually an eclectic menu of dishes from all over!,” Devika says.

 

“We’ve been really fortunate that the husbands of all the women are immensely supportive of the work we do. Some of them even lend a hand at making jewelry and embroidering bags in their spare time!,” she adds.

 

Joy At Work has its future plan completely chalked out. “For the next three years, our aim is to train and evolve to our optimal strength of 20 women, to register as an independent for-profit business enterprise, to ensure all children get quality schooling and to make all the women at the unit financially literate. After this, the plan is to sustain ourselves profitably,” says this changemaker.