Research for vegetable marketing and transport

Volunteers Initiative Nepal is working in Jitpurphedi community, Kathmandu since 2007 with different components. Out of them, women empowerment program is one of the major components including different sectors as micro credit, entrepreneurship and women education and life skills. VIN has been co-coordinating different non agricultural and agricultural activities to provide sustainable income sources and making good entrepreneur for women of Jitpurphedi.
Over the past four weeks local volunteer and international volunteer have been interviewing women in the Jitpurphedi community. They have gathered the research and found that many women who sell their vegetables have problems with transport as it is costly and takes a long time. Through interviewing women in different wards, they learnt that many are interested in a solution for this problem; they recommend a solution at the end of this presentation. The main objectives are to learn about each women agriculture business and how it is affected by transport, to empower the women to grow vegetables and earn more money, to help them to save their income as well as saves time.
Almost all of the women have problem of transportation to sell the vegetables up to the market easily. As they interviewed all the women they all sell the vegetables at Balaju bypass by local bus. They found that the women invest on average Rs.250 each time while they go to the market which is very expensive as they are investing around ¼ of their income on travel costs. It’s very hard for them to work out early (3:00am). Eventually, they found that all the women agreed that they were unhappy with the current system of taking the public bus. National & international volunteer they determined that the existing situation of the women catching the public bus was not adequate and a good situation. Therefore they explored and researched ideas to provide a solution which they recommend the board member of women’s cooperative in their own wards.
The best solution for the problem is easy accessible of the transportation for selling vegetables to the market so that it helps to save their time and do other business activities. To provide the truck facility to them with the contract so that they should follow the rules and regulation of the contract for example: incase board member have to inform to the driver if they have enough vegetables to sell or not if a contract is not followed than there should be a certain punishment.
It provides a potentially means of transport for the women. This means that the women will save the money. Faster services-the women do not have to wait a long time for the bus, therefore they have more time to look after their family and business. More efficient service-the board member of women’s cooperative run the administration which means the transportation system is more organized (it means that the members of the community-the truck drivers-benefit from job opportunities).Community women and co-operative board members appreciate to volunteers work for project so they gave thanks for this wonderful work.