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The Covenant Centre
For Development
(CCD)
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Sorting chillies, enhancing lives, the Chilli Producers’
Collective thrives
much before farmer producer
companies (fpos)
became a
cornerstone of community-based
development, came a unique public limited
company called Grama Mooligai Company
Limited (GMCL) with gatherers of medicinal
plants as its shareholders, owned and
managed by the rural community itself. is
innovative community enterprise has, over
the years, helped hundreds of medicinal plant
cultivators integrate sustainable cultivation
methods, and get better prices for their
produce, as well as educate consumers on
the holistic benefits of these plants. is
innovative company was established by e
Covenant Centre for Development (CCD),
which works in the drought-prone and arid
regions of interior Tamil Nadu.
Starting off with initiatives to address
migration of rural populations, CCD has since
segued into setting up financial institutions
to empower women, organising communities
into enterprises to promote local resources
and traditional skills like organic farming
and traditional medicinal plants (GMCL and
FPOs are prime examples), and preserving
biodiversity by creating a 40-acre Ethno
Medicinal Forest and a Medicinal Plant
Conservation Park with 800 plants species.
Founded by N. Muthuvelayutham in 1989
CCD works at building community
institutions around traditional
wisdom to empower poor and
vulnerable communities for
sustainable development. Their
programmes work in cord with
the SDGs, and addresses poverty
eradication, promotion of farm-
based livelihoods, empowering
women, biodiversity conservation
and development and more
through community-led initiatives.
Thus far, it has promoted 14
KalasamWomen SHG Federations
involving 30,000 women, and made
them independent. Currently, it
works with 25,000 smallholder
farmers by promoting 34 farmers’
producer organizations (FPO’s) and
networking them.