Seer Fish

Listing ID #2224665

Sumudram represents an outstanding display of changes among the traditional marine fisher women which is the pivotal. It developed a state level federation of women fisher organization in 1995 with the objective of socio-economy empowerment of the poor fisher communities its membership extends to about 4,000 women fish workers. It has spread to the districts, namely puri, balesore, bhadrak, ganjam, jagatsinghpur.
samudram as the instrumental for socio economy development, draws its background from confronting socio-economy issues and problems by poor fisher women of affected families i.e induced as a result of mechanised trawlers used for fishing by non-fishermen business community, exploitation by middle man traders, deviation of mandated regulations. The pertinent principles behind this initiative are for the desired socio-economic development outcomes. Currently, samundram has spread its spectrum of interventions in traditional marine fish population habitations of 21 costal blocks in 6 districts- ganjam, puri, jagatsinghpur, bhadrak and balasore. The thrust area of interventions of samudram comprises better catches, value addition, market penetration elimination of monopoly and exploitation of middle man in fish marketing, addressing the socioeconomic issues not conducive to life and livelihood micro and macro level. Near about 70% species of the marine landing considered low priced and fetch very low market price owing to diminishing demand. Drawn from the background of fishing the overreaching objectives of smaudram put emphasis on increasing income of marine fisher families and enable them to engage in productive activities by providing them financial linkage, gainful marketing channels and facilitating their negotiation of key linkage in the emerging value chain, and thus promoters and the model samudram is adopting women fisher folk organisation as a platform in order to attain improved livelihood and food security. Such models that have been promoted in odisha and in other states, primarily livelihood centric with less emphasis on value chain, value addition, market linkage and transforming policy and structure. However, initiatives of samudram put emphasis on the aforesaid components. Holistic development induced livelihoods both financial service and business development services. More importantly, samudram lays emphasis on transforming policies and structure both micro and macro levels.
overtime, built upon the experience, learning samudam decided to work more professionally for value addition and marketing of the marine fish catch. Such are advantages of programmatic decision was translated into action by uaa which become instrumental culminating the decision into action. With support from the ingos such as oxfam, action aid, value addition and market linkage initiatives were taken off. Processing, storage and marketing components were also included. Such timely needed initiatives resulted in curbing middle man exploitation, getting reasonable price and effective market linage. The producers became main players in the process as a result, the process came up with increased leadership quality, capacity and self confidence to manage and sustain a producer company on their own.
• the structure of the initiatives.
with the initiatives of uaa the fisher folk were mobilized to come up united, having their own platform and own identity. The fisher communities realized their causal factors of poverty and development needs. Based on the realization they promoted odisha traditional marine fisher workers union(otfwu). After its promotion it was linked to the national fisher workers forum (nff) and world fish workers forum(wff)
overtime samudram establish its identity as state level federation of women fish workers. The structure of samudram includes the aspects such as business development and institutional development. The institutional development comprises self helping groups of women fish workers the shgs were further grouped as nari sakti samaj and district level federate bodies. Members have sustainable livelihood.