Making the best use of the pine needles, this week for our Community Wise edition, The Pioneer connects with the founder of Pirul, who’s helping a bunch of women from the northern states to have a livelihood of their own.
SHIKHA DUGGAL
Turns out these pesky needles come in handy — our community wise interviewee kind of have a thing for pine trees. Pine trees are part of the conifer family. Therefore, they are gymnosperms, meaning they don’t have fruit or flowers that protect their seeds. The seeds are inside cones, which is where the name conifer comes from. The founder Dr. Nupur Pohalkar of Pirul actually gets crafty with them, with a team of a bunch of women from the northern states. Also helping them with a livelihood of their own!
“I have grown-up in a family which was always very socially conscious, my father has a NGO of his own. So, looking at him working in the most remote areas of our country I automatically had a thing for entering and offering my services to the development sector,” shared Nupur.
The marginalised communities up across the country has pine trees near them, that’s how the founder is capitalising on it because then they have an abundant supply of craft materials. Not understanding? She explains, “These women have a lot of concern for the environment but don’t have the exposure to keep it safe. The story of how Amul was
built from scratch motivates me a lot. I have been closely working with the villagers for a really long time. The district we are working from in the forest is covered with these pines! So there is a concept of one panchayat over there where the communities have the ownership of the forests and not the forest department.”
But, she recalls while doing her fellowship over there — how the pine leaves can actually cause a forest fire, so she made a meaningful use of these resources with the help of the community. “I saw this horrific incident with my eyes when a forest fire caught hold of a villager’s house in the middle of that, the whole of his graze was burnt to ashes.”
They have expanded their team from fifteen women to sixty of them. But she had her share of challenges like, “It was difficult for me to convince the villagers, they were wondering it to be an absolute waste of time. Nobody is going to buy it! See, life in the mountains is very different from what we imagine it to be. It’s the terrain that makes it difficult for them to do business. In the middle of dense fog, women go cut fire-wood to keep their families protected from chilly weather conditions. The whole rural economy is on the shoulders of women, their husbands have come to metropolitan cities in search of a better livelihood and it’s a fact.”
Now what happens is, the financial expenditures are in total control of the men but with an initiative like this women are working from the comfort of their homes, and do not find the need to discuss each and every detail about their ongoing lifestyle. They are
earning for themselves. Looking at one of the women’s growth, change came in when the founder saw how their husband took charge of household chores knowing that the lady of the house is willing to be independent. That moved the founder in a real sense! She was a sweeper, today she handles the managing operations of this exquisite craft in the hills.
Pirul is uplifting marginalized communities by collecting and processing the pine needles and creating a variety of exquisite craft items such as baskets, mats, and decorative pieces. The skilled artisans are transforming the seemingly worthless waste into valuable commodities, thus successfully tackling the environmental issues, with the upcycling process.
