Manoharpur Block, located in West Singhbhum district of Jharkhand has plenty of natural products like Jackfruit, Mahua and Tendu leaves that can be utilized for making value added products. But due to lack of awareness on the utility of these products, every year these products gets wasted. The BRC of Manoharpur Block with the help of CRP-EPs identified this gap and an initiative to set up enterprises for producing value added products from these natural resources was thought of. The Block Resource Centre (BRC) of the block had already been organizing skill training and business related training programmes for entrepreneurs like General Awareness Training (GAT) and Business Motivation Training (BMT) through its CRP-EPs under SVEP. 

A four day training program was organized from 4th to 7th July 2018 which was participated by a total of four clusters comprising of 70 SHG members. The four clusters were trained into two batches. The first batch had the clusters Nandpur, Baranga, and Panchpaiya and the second batch had clusters Dhipa and Baranga. Each batch was given two days of training. The trainings were carried out by Yasharth Consultancy Group, an MEC group from Maharashtra which was set up when enterprise development initiatives were being implemented by KS-NRO during 2017 in the state. Trainers Madhavi and Pradisha from the consltancy group who had come from Maharashtra initially listed out the kind of products that could be made out of Jackfruit.

Practical demonstrations on making seven type of products from Jackfruit were given like making Chips, Jackfruit Bhajiya (Chap), Biscuits, Papad, Chatani, Poodi and Cutlet. It was also decided that a Mela would be organized for selling and promoting the products made during the training program in Manoharpur weekly market. At the end of each day of the training program, participants were also given raw materials for practicing and preparing these products at home. The SHG members prepared the items at home and used to bring it the next day of the training program which would then be tasted by the trainers, guest visitors, Block Project Officers (BPO) and even mentors. Evaluation of the training was also done for each day of the training. The training saw a good response as more SHG women were interested to be part of it. As the participants got feedback on a daily basis, it helped them in learning and improving the skill of making products from the fruit. There was a positive feedback overall by guest visitors and the mentors who agreed that an enterprise on such value added products has a huge scope considering its low investment.