Economic empowerment of rural women through food processing

Rural women can play a significant role by their effectual and competent involvement in entrepreneurial activities. They have basic indigenous knowledge, skill and potential and resources to establish and manage enterprise. Income generating activities are effective instrument of social and economic development to generate employment for a number of farm women within their own social system and best tool for rural women as it adds to the family income. Women are backbone of any nation. Prosperity of the nation depends upon the prosperity of its women. Entrepreneurship is one of the ways for empowerment of women especially in rural areas and hence, promotion of women entrepreneurs is focused highly by the Government. Te food processing is one of the efforts initiated to promote value addition of fruits and vegetables especially for the unemployed, both men and women of the state. It focuses on need based short term skill training where participants learn from hands on training/ practices. The present study was undertaken to find out usefulness of fruits and vegetables preservation, milk and milk products training programme organized under rural youth training for self employment by the rural women. The study was conducted in Auraiya district of Uttar Pradesh. The sample consisted of 20 women participants each training programmes. The data was collected through personal interview technique using interview schedule. Frequency and percentage were calculated for analyzing the data. The results indicated that the fruits and vegetables preservation training perceived as good and increased their knowledge, skill and efficiency about fruits and vegetables preservation.