Mo Wash Company: A platform for WSHG to SME in Wash

Stalin Nayak

What makes a woman? Is it the beauty immortalised for generations in poetry and prose? Or the countless accounts of sacrifice, struggle, and discrimination? Or is it the silent stories of grit, brilliance, perseverance, and the power to overcome all odds and shine the brightest?

This finds evidence in the inspiring stories of women who choose to rise to their potential and make the most of it, carving out extraordinary examples for many to follow and promoting the theme “Encouraging Environmentally Responsible Behaviours.”

Recently, the Chief Minister of Odisha, Shri Naveen Pattanaik, launched the “SHG to SME” campaign with a lot of fanfare to inspire powerful women of Odisha to become powerful entrepreneurs.

This is the story of a group of women who initiated a revolution addressing the establishment of sustainable social enterprises around the theme of WASH and climate change long before the CM’s impassioned call.

According to the statistics provided by the Public Health Division under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of Odisha, nearly 88 percent of diarrhoea cases can be directly attributed to unsafe water, poor sanitation, and inadequate hygiene in Paradeep, a port city on the eastern coast of Odisha. Poor sanitation also adversely affects the nutrition, development, economy, dignity, and safety of women and children.

Open defecation has been a longstanding problem in our slums. The city roads and streets used to be impassable because that was where all the locals came to dump their household garbage. The condition of the streets and colonies gets worse to the point where one cannot walk without putting a handkerchief to one’s nose. During the monsoon, it becomes even more terrible. An U20 Champion, Sarojini, explains that they found many villagers suffering from perennial diseases like diarrhoea and malaria here. The women in our SHGs, as well as others, were constantly taking loans to pay off their hospital bills. With the money they were spending on treatment, they could easily build a toilet, purchase a PPE kit, and arrange for safe drinking water.

The work participation rate of women was extremely low in Jagatsinghpur district. They have the least access to livelihoods, income generation, and credit. Therefore, the women’s group also believes that they have a nominal position in decision-making and leadership roles. They all wished to earn their livelihoods on their own. Their earnings should not only contribute to their sustenance but also to robust institution building, asset creation, and standard of living. Setting up their own business would be the greatest solution, says Nalini, a community leader turned entrepreneur.

Nalini Prabha Sahoo, Sarojini Sarangi, Anusuya Jena, and Ammbu Behara, Kamalini Murmu, are leaders of a brigade called the “Utkal Janani,” drawn from various Self-Help Groups in different wards of Paradeep port city in Odisha’s Jagatsinghpur district. These women from the federation of Self-Help Groups have been striving hard to solve the problem of sanitation around a port city on the eastern coast of Odisha. They not only want to become harbingers of cleanliness in the city but also to establish a conglomerate of small and medium social enterprises in the WASH sector.

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They started introducing their idea of enterprises as an all-out offensive against gender stereotyping. “Within the first five days of our endeavour, we realised that it was not going to be easy to convince our friends to be part of an enterprise around sanitation and waste management. Our colleagues have a conventional understanding of microenterprises; i.e., backyard poultry, goatary, and pickle. However, our movements paved the way for a horizon in a remarkable dimension,” reveals Ammbu Behera, another member of the SHG federation. They joined hands to establish an aggregator of Wash Enterprises with the assistance of UNICEF, popularly known as “Mo Wash Company.”

Their debut brainchild ‘Utkal Janani’, a group of 60 women from Paradeep Urban Local Body and Kujanga block in Odisha’s Jagatsinghpur district, created a cadre of green-collar workforce. Every day, from 4 am to 7 am and then again from 4 pm to 7 pm, they leave their household chores to take on a task they feel merits their urgent and undivided attention. The members of Utkal Janani, armed with whistles, collect household garbage with their battery-operated vehicle (BoV) from areas of the municipality, port trust, and captive industrial townships.

Next on their agenda was to motivate families to build a toilet in their homes and also put them to good use. Apart from sanitation services, the federation also started offering other essential services that are in high demand, such as waste segregation of both solid and liquid waste, recycling into organic manure under the brand of “Mo Khata,” and handling faecal sludge treatment plants. During the COVID-19 lockdown, Paradeep went into a strict lockdown, alongside other villages and townships in the periphery.

This federation has manufactured tons of masks, sanitizers, and PPE kits for COVID warriors and supplied them across the state. New customers, recognizing the quality of the product and its timely delivery, requested them to continue manufacturing those products even post-lockdown.

“We had a keen interest in learning the technical aspects of building and sustaining social enterprises. We have sound knowledge of bookkeeping and accounts gained from a capacitybuilding program by the National Urban Livelihoods Mission. However, we lack skills in product port type, business appraisal, credit linkages, technical integration, and access to the market. We came across a program run by UNICEF and Pantiss Nonprofit, i.e., Odisha Washpreneur Fellowship. Our leaders applied for the program, and Ms. Nalini Sahoo and Ms. Manushi Mandal got selected through a rigorous elimination process. They went through a 9-month-long fellowship program to strengthen our enterprise towards global standards.

Then we all framed an aggregated platform called ‘Mo Wash Company’ to provide a diversified range of goods and services in the wash domain through a dedicated mobile and web-based application. We received seed grants and funds from several state and non-state agencies to run this platform. A few microfinance institutions have also been empaneled on this platform to provide credit to local SHG members for constructing toilets,” said Kamalini Murmu, the treasurer.

Within a span of years, they have produced tons of commercially viable eco-products, facilitated the construction of 5,000-plus toilets, recycled thousands of tons of both solid and liquid waste, and sold many quintals of organic manure. At the same time, the move to push through applications for making all goods and services available has also been undertaken on a war footing. Earlier, they had to spend much more time and money to get basic work done. Now, the income generated by the company is equally divided among the SHG members, informs Sarojini Sarangi.

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Though SHG women have been known to tap into their collective strengths to increase economic prosperity and improve their social outcomes in terms of entrepreneurship, livelihoods, and skills, putting their heads together for better sanitation and waste management has indeed set a positive example. Concludes Nalini Sahoo, a vocal SHG leader, “We have set a precedent in the region of the port. Women from the neighbouring blocks are asking us to include them in this platform issue as well. We all know that for good health, sanitation, and dignity of women, we all need to strengthen woman-led enterprises. I am proud to be a part of this progressive and enterprising women’s group.”

Views expressed by: Stalin Nayak, Mo Wash Company Promoter, A UNICEF Initiative.