Our team in India recently coordinated a trip of a women’s organization from Kibber village in the Spiti Valley to visit Ladakh. The purpose of the visit was to expose them to three organisations in Ladakh working closely with women self-help groups from the villages in Ladakh. The hope is that this will motivate them to start a similar venture, like setting up Snow Leopard Enterprises in Kibber. The three groups they met with were the Women’s Alliance Ladakh, the Snow Leopard Conservancy India Trust, and the Ladakh Ecological Development Group.
At the Women’s Alliance they were exposed to a range of their activities like making handicrafts, seed collection, making jams and preserves, and standing up for social causes they believed in. At the Snow Leopard Conservancy they saw the various handicrafts made by local women and at the Ladakh Ecological Development Group they visited the food processing units. After they visited two organisations our India team met to get some initial feedback from the women, and they were very inspired and keen to set up similar enterprises in Kibber, infused with some of their local touch. The team will be arranging a follow-up meeting in Kibber in October to see how they can take this effort forward with the women, and how it can make a difference for snow leopard protection in the Spiti Valley.