The spread of the pandemic has significantly impacted many communities in India. The country has been witnessing a shortage and restricted access to protective masks across the country during this lockdown period.
Prompted by the need to cater to this demand amongst community members of Tata Power’s operational areas, women members of ‘Dhaaga’ initiative have created homemade cloth masks for the vulnerable and migrant population across various states of India. They have successfully supplied more than 1,20,000 face masks in Maharshtra and Jharkhand.
Dhaaga women members from Pune’s Mulshi and Maval region, Trombay, Jamshedpur and Kalinganagar extended their support to the communities in need around their vicinity by distributing facemasks to the community members and migrant workforce in the area. Subsequently, Amazon also approached these enterprising women to supply cloth masks.
Proud of this initiative of Dhaaga members, Shalini Singh, Chief-Corporate Communications & Sustainability said, “The supply of these face masks by our Dhaaga members has been critical and timely in meeting the demand from a very vulnerable section of the local population in Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Odisha, particularly the migrant population who were returning to the safety of their homes. We appreciate their efforts of supporting the community and wish that these skilled women entrepreneurs of Dhaaga will continue to do their bit during these challenging times.”
These masks are made as per the government norms and supports the company’s Health Thrust Area under its CSR Initiatives. Tata Power has been facilitating various initiatives to address the need of the community in collaboration with the local district administration, stakeholders and NGO partners in the vicinity of its business operations spread across ten states of the country.
Dhaaga initiative touches lives of 1050 women across 8 states of the country (Delhi, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat).
There is a consistent supply of the products by these women to meet the stakeholder’s orders. There has been an additional increase in monthly income of these women in the range of Rs. 2000 – Rs. 5000 in a span of 1.5 years and further spearhead the intervention to enhance the production efficiency and strengthened the sustainability of the programme.
