Bhubaneswar: Promoting products prepared by Mission Shakti Self Help Groups across the state, the Directorate of Mission Shakti under the Department of Women & Child development and Mission Shakti organized a state level mega exhibition for the first time named ‘Mission Shakti Mela’ from 5th December to 16th December 2019 at the IDCO Exhibition Ground, Unit – III, Bhubaneswar. This Mela had 202 stalls for display and sale of various handloom, handicraft, non-timber forest produce (NTFP), food items, spices and non-farm products. Besides, 12 stalls in the “Food Court’ were also managed by women Self Help Groups & women entrepreneurs. During this exhibition-cum-sale, women SHG products
worth Rs 6.055 crore have been sold.
Mission Shakti Mela is a unique initiative by the Government to extend a platform to the women SHGs and Producer Groups (PGs) to display and sell a wide range of
products. This will not only help urban consumers gain knowledge and access to diverse and unique SHG products at Bhubaneswar, but also enable rural and urban women producers to showcase their products, develop market linkages and further refine their products according to current consumer preferences.
Mission Shakti has been a revolutionary initiative started in the year 2001 by
Government of Odisha with the aim to empower women across the state, both rural as well as urban. It endeavours to provide sustainable livelihood solutions to women SHGs and PGs with a view to enable them to generate a long term and sustainable income source.
This gala event was visited by Honourable Chief Minister Sri Naveen Patnaik, Chief Secretary to Government Sri Asit Kumar Tripathy, Development Commissioner cum Additional Chief Secretary Sri Suresh Chandra Mahapatra, Honourable MP, Kendrapada Sri Anubhav Mohanty and other dignitaries. During his visit, Honourable Chief Minister appreciated the entrepreneurship initiatives of the women SHGs and congratulated them on their noteworthy collective action towards socioeconomic empowerment of women in Odisha. He bought a hand-crafted sabai bag and a wooden jewellery box made by women SHGs.
Smt. Tukuni Sahu, Honourable Minister, Women & Child Development & Mission
Shakti was the Chief Guest at the valedictory session of Mission Shakti Mela on 16th December 2019. On this occasion, collaboration of Directorate of Mission Shakti with Flipkart, a leading e-commerce platform of India, was announced to promote online sale of women SHG products. An exclusive Mission Shakti e-commerce portal is being developed in collaboration with the Tata Trusts dedicated to market women SHG products online.
Mission Shakti is also partnering with ORMAS to strengthen 300 women Producer Groups across the state thereby ensuring socioeconomic empowerment of women SHGs.
Promoting aggregate marketing of SHG products by establishment of a physical
distribution network, Mission Shakti Bazaar at Gandamunda, Bhubaneswar with 64 retail outlets is being built to make SHG products available round the year for the urban population.
In the august presence of Dr. Lopamudra Baxipatra, Advisor, Mission Shakti; Smt.
Sujata R Karthikeyan, Commissioner-cum-Director, Directorate of Mission Shakti and Smruti Ranjan Pradhan, Director (Special Projects)-cum-Director, NRLM & Chief
Executive Officer, ORMAS, best performing women SHGs were felicitated.
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