Kanyakumari Valamburi Federation
Right after Tsunami the focus was to restore the livelihood of over a thousand artisans and vendors who depended on the sale of shell crafts on the beaches of Kanyakumari. The disaster occurred right in the middle of the annual tourist season which meant that thousands of them either lost their goods to the waves or were left with goods worth lakhs of rupees unsold in their homes.
CCD began a cash for work programme for these 1000 plus artisans and vendors to tide over the difficult season. They were even provided with raw materials to revive livelihoods. In the second phase seasonal loans were provided to these families. The artisans were provided training to improve their skills in respective professions. Linkages were created with the vendor groups. Seasonal stalls were set up for food vendors and merchants. The groups were then linked with Rameshwaram based groups for raw material procurement.
The groups were created based on the activities they were involved with and over 400 shell craft workers were formed into 25 activity based groups. These groups were modeled on CCD's success story, the Kalasam groups. Here again the members were all women. Since CCD has started working with them these women have registered a 50% increase in their incomes.
This success has been instrumental in bringing these groups under a federation. Currently the federation has only shell craft workers but in future this will also include other artisans such as seaweed collectors, palm leaf workers etc.
The federation now owns and runs a fair price shop and has a wider choice of merchants for procuring raw materials thanks to the linkages set up by CCD. The federation also plans to establish their own processing unit and common facility centre. With this the federation hopes to be able to spin off a sustainable enterprise in the next couple of years.