The University of Amrita adopted 101 villages and is providing the villages with sanitation, electricity etc. Next to investments in the village, they are trying to make them self-sustainable. Those villagers usually don't have a reliable form of income. This result in the inability of investing in themselves. The live-in-labs program is started to help those villagers with this problem.
What are we going to do?
As our project is part of the Live-in-Labs program we will provide the village near Bangalore, Byse, with a training program to start a business venture in making plates and cups from the fallen leaves of the areca palm. The use of these leaves is attractive as it is a sustainable and a responsible alternative for regular disposable products. These plates and cups will be used at festive activities, such as marriages and reception and other social events.
For more information on the Live-in_Labs program see link:
https://www.amrita.edu/international/live-in-labs
Our job is to provide the villagers with the knowledge of starting a business venture in the making of Areca Palm leaves tableware. From making of the machines needed to dry and press the leaves till the whole process of harvesting, drying, cleaning, pressing and finishing.
We will be looking into the design of the solar dryer, the business applications of this project and we will look for various recycling methods. We will be helped by four students of the Amrita University, they will provide the design and fabrication of the pressing machine.
This project requires a handful amount of investment and cooperation of village people to learn this process and make it into a successful business venture.
At the end of the project we hope to see the local villagers excited to carry out the business venture from which the project has set the base. In the upcoming years we hope that the project has provided a foundation for the villagers to invest in themselves and the business.
Who are we?
We are Anita Tang and Tiffany Clein, both TU Delft students in the minor of International Entrepreneurship and Development. We come from two different fields of study (Anita from Applied Earth Sciences and Tiffany from Industrial Design Engineering), by combining our knowledge and skills we will be able to help the villagers of Byse to utilise their talent in local entrepeneurship and thus create an additional income. The program is initialised by the Amrita University and will be supervised by the TU Delft and Amrita University.
We will be in India from october 2016 to february 2017. We are excited to get started on this project and we will provide our best efforts to make this project a succes!