Dr Renu Suri - Early Director of LifeBuilder's Women Entrepreneurs Dairy project

Dr Renu Suri joined LifeBuilder and our partner on this programme, the social enterprise MDVL (Macro Dairy Ventures Limited), for 14 months in 2008 to help develop and manage the Women's Dairy Programme.

Here she tells us a little bit more about her background and experience of working on this unique project:

"I am an anthropologist by my academic qualifications with a Ph.D degree on Physical Anthropology of Angami Nagas. I am a development practitioner with diverse experience of over 26 yrs in the field of human development. Diverse projects I have been associated with are, women and development, education, relief and rehabilitation for natural disasater like earth quakes and tornados, health and nutrition and conservation of tropical forests.

During my tenure as Director of CSR with MDVL and LifeBuilder I had the opportunity to translate my diverse learnings to facilitate the first generation of women entreprenures of rural Punjab to become successful entrepreneurs in the dairy Industry. The business model of MDVL is a unique model where every Women entreprenur owns five cows each by taking a reduced cost loan from a nationalised bank, facilitated by LifeBuilder.

It was a challenge to motivate the first 25 Women Entrepreneurs (WEs) but after that there was no looking back. WEs were selected through a well defined selection crieteria. These WEs have been trained to organize themselves in groups and work in shifts. Regular trainings were imparted to them on their capacity building for taking good care of the health of their animals and also their one health. Training was also imparted on strengthening their business skills.

We started with first Community Development Unit (CDU) and till the time I left in may 2010 there are four CDUS in Operation with over 300 WEs.

As director the Director of Corporate Social Responsiblity, I also facilitated in raising marginal money for the WEs.

It has been a life long experience to work for MDVL and for rural women and in Ludhina- my birth place and I always thought this is the small way I could repay to the land where I was born."

Dr Renu Suri