Can you imagine a Business School where most of the students are semi-literate? Well, that's exactly the profile of most of the women enrolled at Mann Deshi Udyogini (MDU), a Micro Business School for rural women.
MDU was started in December 2006 by the Mann Deshi Mahila Sahakari Bank (MDMSB), which is a co-operative society providing micro-credit to rural women entrepreneurs in Satara district of Maharashtra state in India. Chetna Gala Sinha, the founder-chairperson of MDU, is an Ashoka fellow and she started the MDMSB in 1998 in order to cater to the credit needs of rural women. According to Chetna, the idea of starting a business school came from an enthusiastic semi-literate woman, who kept pestering her for know-how about the wholesale vegetable business and other startegies to improve her own vegetable business. MDU was started in December 2006 with a Rs. 7 lakh (about $17500) grant from HSBC.
MDU does not have any pre-qualification criteria and the curriculum is entirely driven by the needs of rural women. It offers courses in goat rearing, screen printing, selling cellphone recharge couponsbag-making etc. The school also offers soft-skill development courses such as confidence building, financial literacy, spoken English and computer skills.
Chetna plans to introduce a course on hygiene management in rural areas in association with regional hospitals, in the near future. MDU has also received funding from an NRI to start a mobile micro-business school, which will be launched in Karnataka soon.
Chetna's efforts to bring about inclusive economic development in rural interior Maharashtra, through MDMSB and MDU, are amazingly inspiring. Here is the link to Chetna's interview that was published in Times of India recently:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Editorial/QA_Most_women_in_our_B-school_are_semi-literate/rssarticleshow/2205650.cms
Here is the link to MDMSB's website: http://www.manndeshi.org/index.htm
