3rd Profit Sharing Event of Paryavaran Mitra

This week we held a wonderful profit-sharing event with our Paryavaran Mitra sisters. We recapped the last quarter by showing photos and a couple of videos from fun events that the sisters have participated in over the last few months.We also screened a film promoting our project, made free of charge by a famous Gujarati movie producer. Many of the women were featured in the film and it was so fun to see their excitement when they saw themselves or their friends on the screen. Afterward, we shared our profits from the last quarter. Each woman received a percentage of the profits proportional to the amount of waste she collected.

On Friday our team, including 60 or so of the Paryavaran Mitra sisters, visited ESI (the Environmental Sanitation Institute). The institute is located on a beautiful campus designed by B.V. Doshi. Jayheshbai spoke to the women about the importance of sanitation in their daily lives and then we watched a short video on the subject. Many of our sisters shared their thoughts on cleanliness and the impact it has made in their lives. After the presentation, we shared a snack and finished the day off with Garba, a traditional Gujarati folk dance.

On Saturday we made a breakthrough with the planters as we began selling them in an online store. This is very exciting news that only became more exciting when we made our first sale within just a couple hours of putting the planters online. In only 3 days we have already made 4 sales. We hope for this to turn into a consistent stream of purchases.

Throughout the week, we continued to make contact with schools to raise awareness about our project. We presented at the assembly of one high school and made plans to hold waste collection drives with two schools this coming week. This has become another important aspect of our project as we hope that working with kids may inspire change, even if we only reach the minds of just a few young people.

There is a lot going on with our project, from working with the schools, to selling planter bottles, to working with and empowering the women. Sometimes it feels like we are juggling a lot of things, but the project has been making consistent progress. We are happy to be able to do such meaningful work, as we try to uplift our sisters and our environment.