Learning through practice: women interns searching for sustainability and collaboration with small-scale enterprises

ABSTRACT

This paper is about the collaboration between the Centurion University of Technology and Management (CUTM), Odisha (India), and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim (Norway), initiated in 2017. The main objective of the collaboration was to facilitate students through educators to bridge the gap between higher education and the practical skills needed for assessing and advancing sustainable development in local communities. This paper presents the contribution of nine women interns within the framework of partnership among the universities, government, and social enterprises in Odisha and Andhra Pradesh. It analyses the role of women interns in activities and experiences in Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs), in motivating women farmers to join FPOs to benefit in terms of increasing productivity, value addition for better products, and improving market opportunities. The concluding observations section provides three sets of learnings each for the role of women interns and implications for higher education.

KEYWORDS:

• Practice-based education
• women interns
• social enterprises

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the contributions made by various stakeholders participating in the project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 NABARD – National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Government of India).

2 BREDS – Bapuji Rural Enlightenment and Development Society is an NGO working in South Odisha and Andhra Pradesh for the past 30 years. Their work in focused on farmers, women, unemployed youth, school dropouts and children.

3 All names are anonymised and informed consent was obtained from key respondents.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Smita Mishra Panda

Smita Mishra Panda is Professor and Director Research at the Centurion University of Technology and Management, Odisha. Her research focuses primarily on gender and development, natural resource management (livelihoods, policies, and institutions), governance, rural development, Indigenous peoples, and transgender issues. She has published extensively in several scholarly journals. Smita has authored and edited Engendering Governance Institutions: State, Market and Civil Society (Sage, 2008); Gender, Mobilities and Livelihood Transformations: Comparing Indigenous People in China, India and Laos (Routledge London, 2013); and Social Exclusion and Policies of Inclusion: Issues and Perspectives across the Globe (Springer, 2022).

Ragnhild Lund

Ragnhild Lund is Professor Emerita of Geography/Development Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU. Her research interests are theories of gender and development, development-Induced displacement, and post-crisis recovery. She has published extensively in several scholarly journals. She is author of Gender and Place (1994), and co-author and editor of Renegotiating Local Values. Working Women and Foreign Industry in Malaysia (1994); In the Maze of Displacement (2003); Global Childhood, Globalization, Development and Young People (2008); The Tsunami of 2004 in Sri Lanka: Impacts and Policy in the Shadow of Civil War (2010); Gender, Mobilities and Livelihood Transformation Comparing Indigenous People in China, India and Laos (2014); Gendered Entanglements. Re-visiting Gender in Rapidly Changing Asia (2015); and Fisherfolks in Cambodia, India and Sri Lanka. Migration, Gender and Well-being (2021).

Supriya Pattanayak

Supriya Pattanayak is Vice Chancellor of Centurion University of Technology and Management, Bhubaneswar, Odisha. Her research interest is in the field of gender and development issues, and social work pedagogy. She has worked with NGOs, multilateral and bilateral agencies, federal and state governments. In her role as State Representative (Odisha), Department for International Development India (British High Commission), she collaborated with various development partners in pursuance of harmonization of development efforts and achievement of MDGs.