About Sabuj Sangha
The Origin of Sabuj Sangha
Sunderbans famous for Mangroves & as habitat for Royal Bengal Tiger is also an attractive tourist destination located in the southern most corner of West Bengal very close to the confluence of the holy river Ganga and Bay of Bengal.
Though being a popular hot spot for tourism, lives of people of the region is still hard and struggling with regular catastrophes of nature and calamities. Almost every year many of the villages in the region swept away with over flooding. Also many villages are poorly connected with nearby towns and consequently deprived of essential facilities including health, safe water, livelihood resources for sustenance etc. The majority of the population here strive on agriculture and allied activities.
The intervention of Sabuj Sangha
Sabuj Sangha a community based organisation struggling since more than four decades to explore, create and develop opportunities towards a better living for the community reside there. They integrated the poorly deprived section of women belong to the community, striving with vulnerable nature financial crisis and poor connectivity with the mainstream populace in West Bengal, of the region by forming SHGs and impart them orientation and training to improve their existing skills they utilise in their daily lives. Over the years hundreds of Self Help Groups have been formed at hamlet level and trained.
Sabuj Sangha with support and guidance from Dr. Amal Mukhopadhyay, Founder Director of ‘Elga Biotech’ and CEO of ‘Hanseatic India Forum e.V.’, originally from Varanasi presently based in Hamburg, Germany and Mr. Ansuman Das, Secretary & Director of ‘Sabuj Sangha’, volunteered encouraging the women under the umbrella of SHGs to start entrepreneurship and earning capacity. It was found that initiating bakery unit would be the best option to start with.
Thus, on 13th November, 2015 ‘Sundarban German Bakery’ started. It was inaugurated by the then German Consul General Mr. Olaf Iverson.
This is for the first time in the history of the Sunderbans, such effort was taken up, which continued to inspire and motivate the people, especially the women from poor families to get into entrepreneurship and earn a life of dignity.
At present around 15 families are directly involved through production and marketing with the Bakery.
