Source for Change - story of an urban boy and his attempt to empower rural women

Let me tell you a story. The story of a boy who was born and brought up in India’s financial capital – Mumbai. His family hailed from a village in the Jhunjhunu district of Rajasthan but he had never visited any village, not even his own, till high school. He has always heard about the low standard of life, the social issues, the gender inequality, female infanticide, lack of education and many other such negative things about village life.

Today, he lives in one such village in Rajasthan for almost three quarters of a year. First time he visited the village was by chance but he lives there by choice. The same boy, Shrot Katewa, who was oblivious to rural India went on to start up ‘Source for Change’- a rural BPO that provides top-quality BPO services to global clients at competitive prices.

It all started when Shrot was travelling to Rajasthan with his family for a trip after high school. His father suggested that they visit their ancestral village and Shrot agreed quickly as he was curious to witness the life he had just always heard about. Most of what he observed was aligned to what he had heard. There was a lack of information, education and employment opportunities and gender inequality screamed loud behind the low voices of women. But Shrot also saw the hard working, smart people and their untapped potential.

Shrot observed that women did not have a say in any matter. They were just confined to household work. In markets, even in the district of Jhunjhunu, one would find 90% men. The quality of education in villages was low and even if someone put in the effort and finished graduation or post graduation, there were no employment opportunities available. The only option was to move to cities for work but women did not have that option at all. After getting married, one could not even think of working, let alone working in a city.

Shrot thought of bringing the jobs to rural India and employ women in those jobs. SFC was started in October 2007 to train and employ women for a variety of outsourcing services like data entry, data standardization and cleaning, billing and invoice processing, archival etc. SFC started a BPO centre in the town of Bagar in Rajasthan and 300 women are employed till date. Making women financially independent and confident, SFC has impacted their social standing as well.

It all may seem like a fairytale now, with a boy from a city coming and changing the situations in a village and people running to grab the opportunity they have been deprived of for long. But it was not the case at all for SFC. With a great support of Piramal foundation right from the beginning one may think that everything came easy for SFC but convincing rural women to work in a BPO was nothing less than a nightmare. Women working in offices was frowned upon. On top of that, working on computers was unbelievable for them. Men had the concern of losing a status in the family if their wives started earning and they did not. And another challenge was to explain what is a BPO to people. The word itself sounded very suspicious.

There were some women who wanted to take the opportunity and were eager to learn and work. Because their opinions were never heard, they did not express their wish to work. After knocking almost all the doors in the area, Shrot managed to convince 10 women to start working on the first project. These were some brave and intelligent women who picked up the training fast and performed extremely well.

In 2008, SFC got a data entry project for Pratham India. The project was spun across 22 Indian states and SFC was responsible for Rajasthan. Shrot’s confidence and faith in SFC and in the potential of rural women knew no bounds when it was selected as the best provider of data entry services across India by Pratham. After a year when SFC started training and recruiting again, people started coming themselves as they had also gained faith in SFC efforts and have seen the results themselves.

It has been over 5 years and Shrot has been continuing his efforts to get more projects and employ as many women as possible. A boy who has never seen rural India, works and lives there today, not only for himself but for people whom he could not even relate to 6 years back. There have been times when Shrot felt that he did not belong there and wondered if he was doing it right. With SFC planning to set up BPOs in 5 more states’ rural areas, looks like all the doubts are cleared today and he knows he has taken the right path.

Website : Source for Change