Stepping Into Her Own Power

In this part of the countryside, paid work for women is scarce. Every weekday 21 women walk into our workshop to roll incense, hand-make dhoop and sambrani, blend and pack — and go home at the end of the month with an income that is theirs to decide about.

Nobody arrives here with a résumé. Word travels through families, not job boards, and most of the women who join us have had little or no formal schooling — which has never been the thing that decides whether someone can do this work well.

21women, every weekday
A woman in a pink sari filling rows of clay ghee lamps by hand on the PremaNature workshop floor

Eight Hours of Skilled Hand Work

Rolling incense sticks. Rolled one at a time, by hand, at a pace the material sets.

Hand-making dhoop & sambrani. Every cup is shaped and pressed by hand, one at a time.

Blending. The chemistry of resins, woods and oils, learned on the floor and refined over years.

Packing & boxing. Including the small printed blessing that goes inside each box.

Rolling, along the length of the table
Rolling, along the length of the table
Sticks laid out to be rolled
Sticks laid out to be rolled
The whole floor, together
The whole floor, together
Dhoop cups going onto the racks
Dhoop cups going onto the racks

What a Wage Actually Changes

When we asked the women here what the work has given them, almost nothing they said was about money on its own.

A woman of the PremaNature team smiling as she works through order paperwork on the workshop floor

Money of Her Own

For many of them, this is the first income that is hers — earned independently of her husband, paid on time, every month. It buys a saree, or a small piece of jewellery, or it is set aside month by month for a child’s education.

“I can buy a saree without asking anyone.”

  • A Voice That Carries

    • Several describe the day as restful rather than laborious — they say it does not feel like work.
    • The confidence to speak up, first on the floor and then at home.
    • A clear sense of how rare this opportunity is in the villages around us.

  • A Room Full of Women

    • Eight hours a day in company, instead of eight hours alone with the housework.
    • Sisterhood, and the particular closeness of women who work side by side every day.
    • Being missed when absent — belonging to a group outside the household.

  • A Wider World

    • Learning new skills well into adulthood, after a schooling that ended early or never began.
    • Holding real responsibility inside something larger than a household.
    • Knowing the product goes to people in countries they have never seen.
A woman packing a PremaNature order into a cardboard carton by hand

Care That Goes in the Box

The materials are ones they consider sacred, and they are handled with the attention that implies. Care goes into each piece deliberately, rather than each piece simply being produced. It is work worth doing — and so, they will tell you, is the person doing it.

Fair Trade, Checked by Someone Else

  • Women's Empowerment

    Principle 6 — gender equity and women’s economic empowerment. The reason this page exists.

  • Fair Payment

    Principle 4 — a wage agreed freely and paid on time, every month.

  • Good Conditions

    Principle 7 — safe hours, safe work, and a safe room to do it in.

  • Capacity Building

    Principle 8 — training that turns a first day on the floor into a skill she keeps.
World Fair Trade Organisation Guaranteed Member mark

Our manufacturing company, SkandaBio Organics Pvt. Ltd., is a Guaranteed Member of the World Fair Trade Organisation — its highest monitoring tier. Which means none of the above is only our word for it.

See our WFTO listing

See It for Yourself

The Floor, in MotionThirty-seven seconds of an ordinary weekday.
A Day at WorkBakkiya Lakshmi’s day, start to finish.
Packing Your OrderLalitha, on what happens when an order comes in.

“Whenever we receive an order, we have a small celebration here in our packing department.”

— Lalitha, packing department