Students empower street food vendors

Successive batches at Dharmamurthi Rao Bahadur Calavala Cunnan Chetty’s Hindu College in Pattabiram have been inculcating a sense of hygiene among sellers of chaat items

February 10, 2017 04:49 pm | Updated 04:49 pm IST

The next time you encounter a pani puri vendor stuffing the bhaji in the puri with polythene gloves or serving the snack in disposable plates, in Pattabiram or any other neighbourhood located nearby, the odds are heavy that he was trained by a group of students from a college in the locality.

Students of Dharmamurthi Rao Bahadur Calavala Cunnan Chetty’s Hindu College in Pattabiram are running ‘Vendors Kingdom’ a project that seeks to inculcate a sense of hygiene among street vendors running food stalls.

This project, which targets food vendors in Patabiram, Avadi and Ambattur, is two years old and is handled by successive batches of students from the college’s Enactus Club. A not-for-profit, Enactus promotes social entrepreneurship in colleges.

When the project was launched in 2015, only Patabiram came under its radar.

“We extended the project to Ambattur and Avadi and hope to take it to Villivakkam and Perambur,” says Hassan R., president of Enactus Hindu, as this chapter is known.

Hassan is a final year student of B.Sc. computers. Many final year students are involved in the project; at last count, 60 final year students of the college were on board. Much of the field work is carried out during the weekends, sometimes, the students undertake the work on weekdays.

“Enactus clubs at colleges come up with many initiatives, but many of them don’t scale up as juniors don’t always take the mantle from seniors and continue with the project. Vendors Kingdom is an interesting case of juniors carrying forward a project,” K. Vishnu Priya, regional programme executive (South East India) of Enactus.

The Vendors Kingdom project aims at a holistic development of street food vendors, especially those selling chaat items, equipping them with skill sets that would help them in their business.

After an awareness session, the vendors are provided with a kit comprising hand gloves, aprons and caps. They are also trained to face competition.

“Persuading them to attend our meetings took some doing. So, we decided to have the training session where they conduct their business and at a time suitable for them,” says Hassan, adding that over 40 vendors have been trained so far.

As a majority of the vendors are from various north Indian states, student-members of the Enactus Hindu who are polyglots are encouraged to do follow-ups, thereby staying in touch with the vendors.

“We have teams that coordinate with the vendors on a regular basis,” says Hassan. As part of the empowerment initiative, these street food vendors are introduced to wholesale vendors.

For this project, Mahindra Rise and Hindustan Unilever has extended grants.

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