First Steps At Dhriiti – ‘The Courage Within’

Dhriiti Office

I joined Dhriiti on 2^nd August, 2016 as an India Fellow with lots of excitement and hope, to get an exposure in the space of entrepreneurship and enterprise development, as my dream is to become a social entrepreneur too in the near future. I was welcomed by the staffs of Dhriiti and after a while the Executive Director of Dhriiti, Mrs Nidhi Arora gave an orientation about Dhriiti’s activities and projects. After the orientation, I got a fair idea about what Dhriiti is doing to promote entrepreneurship among youth, children and organizations. She had also explained the FSE-ible element (F- Financial, S- Social and E- Ecological Feasibility), which Dhriiti believes as its core principle.

Khajoori Khas village

Next day, I went to Khajoori Khas village of North East Delhi with two project staffs of Dhriiti for SWED training of INSPIRE project for girls, who are learning tailoring there. The session of that day was on marketing. I was surprised to see the confidence, engagement level and marketing ideas of the girls who came from simple educational backgrounds. I took photos of the trainees and tried to know about their aspirations to become entrepreneurs through our conversations. During our training, we got to know that one family of our trainee is involved in running a small jute bag manufacturing unit. After training we went there to see the unit and it was really surprising to see the products they are making. The unit is making a good profit as the jute bags are in demand now-a-days for its eco-friendly features. In the days that followed, I was assigned the role to see and modify (if required) the training materials where finance and costing parts are involved, to collect content for Dhriiti’s website, help in development business plans for trainees, develop procedures for selection of candidates for INCUBATE project and to help in data maintenance & internal capacity building.

Orientation training of Beautypreneur project officers

I also got a chance to be involved in an orientation training of the project officers. I joined the training to learn more about entrepreneurship in beauty sector and I got to know various new things about which I did not even think before. I made Cash Flow Statement in excel to show the project officers and the next day morning, I also went for a survey with other project officers to gather information to make a Cash Flow for beauty business.

Besides my work profile, I have also been enjoying the culture of Dhriiti. Here, all of us take lunch together and share our food with each other. My mentor and all the staff members are very friendly and helpful; they helped me to adjust in the new environment and to find an accommodation in Delhi too. The project officers who came from different parts of India for training were also very nice, with whom I enjoyed many fun moments. In a nutshell, I must have to say that I got a very nice family to live in for the next 12 months.