Women's group set up solar panel making unit in Maha village

A women's self-help group has set up a solar panel manufacturing unit at a village here in Maharashtra, as part of a project aimed at encouraging women to take up jobs and sustain their livelihood, officials said.

Talking to PTI on Thursday, Wardha Zilla Parishad'sChief Executive Officer Dr. Sachin Ombase claimed it to be the first such unit set up by a rural women's self-help group in the state.

''The project is aimed at helping women in rural areas towards sustainable employment and to raise their standard of living,'' he said.

The unit, set up by the Tejaswi Solar Energy BackwardWomen's Industrial Society, comprising 214 members which include 200 from backward classes, will be inaugurated by district Guardian Minister Sunil Kedar on January 26, he said.

These uneducated women took up the project and made efforts towards gaining technical proficiency in solar panel construction and manufacturing, the official said.

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay has provided technical support for the project, he said.

''Through this project, we are trying to be entrepreneurial in a village where the majority of the women belong to backward classes,'' the women's industrial society director, Sangita Wankhede, said.

''We received training under the Zilla Parishad's UMEDcampaign and now, we are manufacturing solar panels, streetlights, and lamps in our village,'' she said.

The Maharashtra State Rural Livelihoods Mission-UMEDAbhiyan aims at creating efficient institutional platforms for the rural poor for a sustainable livelihood.

Wankhede said they recently received an order of street lights worth Rs 40 lakh from the Zilla Parishad.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)