In the year 2010, PTF began its journey at the little village called Tataguni in rural Karnataka, about 21 km away from the city of Bangalore. A social environment where most men typically blew up their income in consuming arrack, a locally brewed alcohol, resulted in no financial support for the women and a lot of emotional turmoil in family. Moreover women did not have any means to earn a living, due to lack of vocational or any other livelihood skill. A need to empower women to bring about a social change was starkly evident.

On the other side, replacing plastic carry bags for environmental reasons was an emerging need. With this idea of the first project for PTF was born.

Two big retail chains in Bangalore, Soch and FabricSpa were identified who at the time were willing to shift away from plastic bags. A proposal was placed by PTF to replace them with cloth bags stitched by the rural women using recycled fabric and waste material. This beautifully fulfilled the agenda  to make it both economically viable to the retail chains by reducing their cost as well as checking all parameters to be an environment friendly product!  PTF was awarded the contracts and they became our project partners.

Soch – A high end national retail chain, is one of the most stylish brand in women’s fashion became our first endorsement. Soch replaced plastic covers with cloth/jute bags, which encouraged customer awareness towards environment and also resulted in a steady growth of their brand value.

Fabric Spa –Jyothi Labs took over ‘Snoways’, a retail chain of dry-cleaning in Bangalore. The merger and acquisition team at Jyothi Labs took simple dry cleaning to a whole new level, introducing Fabric Spa. The brand initiated a ‘No Plastic’ to give away washed clothes to customers. The entire contract was outsourced to PTF to stitch fabric bags for customers of Fabric Spa.

A workshop was set up at Tathguni village with stitching machines funded by MD retail, a Bangalore based company. Women were trained to recycle fabric to create jute and cloth bags. 60 women in and around Tataguni village in rural Karnataka got employment in a go!

The success story of our first project in Karnataka, inspired the next area of operation, Bengal. A tribal area in the interiors, 56 km away from Asansol  was our next destination. Several challenges were faced, intensified by the demographic fabric and severe socio economic conditions.

A training program of two months was conducted with 38 women where they learnt stitching bags and several other accessories. Stitching machines were donated by Peepal Tree Foundation to the top 10 trained women. 5 machines were acquired for further training.

The project became self sustaining. All produce by our women from this unit was by directly bought by Green House, a Kolkata based export house.

NUS (National University Hospital , Singapore)

Last year in 2018, we were contacted by National University Hospital, Singapore (NUS), to make 300 jute bags as a conference take away for delegates. The consignment went to Bali, Indonesia and that was our first Global  export consignment.

300 bags created by tribal ladies in interiors of Bengal for a conference in Bali, Indonesia. It was NUS (National Institute of Singapore) who placed the order with us.  

Our Programs with underprivileged children

While the mothers were employed at Peepal Tree Foundation, children, just played around since most did not go school. We structured a value based education model for these children via periodic informal sessions. Storytelling, as an important tool to establish values first came into being as another program of Peepal Tree Foundation .