Orientation and Training on Mushroom Cultivation and Farming on 8^th December, 2015

Extending life building skills to the rural women has become one of the tough worries by the development institutions, involved in the countryside.

Dealing such issue in the project area equally confronts to IEA. The organization has taken such unusual prospect and leveraged it amongst many rural women, working consistently in the rural SHG platform.

In the given backdrop, IEA has sincerely planned to give an exposure to some potential SHG women of the project area in Kandhamal district on the mushroom production for their domestic consumption and increase regular family income.

With this pre-understanding, 8 SHG groups presenting 2 from each group, representing from project area have attended 1 day training, conducted by the master trainer on Mushrooming cultivation in the costal Odisha. As per designed travel plan, these women were picked up from their door step and they travelled overnight by bus directly to the training centre, covering 300 kms from Kandhamal district. They were found enjoyed learning the training. At the end of the training it is experienced and recorded that:-

· The type of materials used in the mushroom cultivation and its availability.

· Processing methods of using raw materials in raising mushroom beds.

· Step wise input, a farmer needs to apply it, in caring the mushroom beds on daily basis and watchful application of working skills to reap the sprouted mushrooms.

   On their return, these representatives from 8 SHGs have trained and disseminated the acquired needful information to their groups respectively and have successfully raised the mushroom beds at their native environment in their backyard and reaping mushroom; exactly they had learned out of master trainer and hoped to gain the benefit.

The message of cultivating mushroom by the rural women has spread far and wide in their locality and many women are visiting the production site and curiously observing the mushrooms, grown on the artificially set up beds, beyond their dreams.