Report on visit to AVA Creations, the Community Weaving cum Prouction Centre, Rani

A team of four members namely Dr. Sangita Kakoti, Deputy Director Multimedia,
Antara Mahanta Barua, Assistant Professor in Electronics, Dr. Sarmistha Rani Baruah,
Assistant Professor in Agriculture and Anushmita Das, Duty Officer, Jyan Taranga had
made a field visit to AVA Creations, the Community Weaving cum Prouction Centre
located near Deepor Beel, Matiya Pahar at Rani on 12 th July, 2019. The purpose of the
visit was to conduct a survey of the centre and its weavers working there.

The team visited the AVA Creations Centre and had a discussion with Anu
Mandal, Design Head-AVA & Chairperson of the centre on various areas such as mode of
training provided by them, background of their weavers, does their training cover the
weavers etc.

The Ava Creations Centre was established in May, 2017, deals in organic cloths
and fabric manufacturing which is run by Arup Kr. Baishya and Anu Mandal. They started
their work at their own place with only 2 looms and now they have a total of 16 looms in
which 9 different types of looms are available. The main motive of AVA Creations is to
make people sustainable by themselves. They provide training to the local people from
nearby villages as there is no provision for accommodation and food for their trainees.
They have trained workers for different kinds of works like warping, thread cutting,
design control, quality control, weaving etc. Total 25 women weavers were trained in
this centre and the products made by these weavers are being sold in the market in the
brand name of “AVA Creation”

In the initial stage, the owners of the Ava Creations had to face a lot of difficulties
from communities as the people of the locality used to earning daily basis wages and
they had no monetary motivations and no fixed time for their work. So in order to
combat these problems, the owners had to conduct a lot of counselling sessions on
legal, home based and other related issues which included their children and husbands.
The management of the centre also motivated the workers by showing them some
motivational videos and speeches which would help them to be self-sufficient and self-
sustainable. The main issue with the local people was that they does not know their
speciality, as they also doesn’t realise the market value of their work. Now, in the
process, the weavers of this centre earns more than their husbands that helps in
supporting their families. It is now seen that the mind-set of these weavers have also
changed and the problems which they used to face from their husbands and children
are also sorted out to a large extent.

Even thought, Ava Creations doesn’t have a full-fledged training centre, they still
provide training in their own looms. They impart training from the very first step of
weaving till the final output is produced.

According to Anu Mandal, the learners have to be provided by the University. She
has also mentioned that there are lot of stages in the training process of “Weavers”.
This field has a big opportunity for placement, she is herself in need of more trained
weavers where she prefers people with basic education so that it becomes easy for the
learners to understand the basic things of weaving.

The team members were summarised the following points after the field visit to
this centre.

 The suggested name of the training programme is Certificate in Textile and

Weaving Development programme.
 The curriculum of the programme and the learners have to be provided by
the University.
 The preparation of the syllabus and the study materials of the programme
will be done by them.
 The training is to be provided in hour system for both theory and practical
part and minimum 15 days of practical session in regular basis is needed.

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