You can volunteer with TruTrade for multiple and very diverse areas, some of the areas that we need help are in the following areas. Please DO NOT be limited only to these areas, if you think that you have a skill that can help uplift the financial status of the farmers, please feel free to write to us, we will be more than glad to discuss with you:
- Soft skills training for push-cart vendors : TruTrade leverages the push-cart vendors for last mile sales, as discussed in About TruTrade page, we leverage the push-cart vendors as this provides livelihoods to the urban poor and at the same time makes organic food affordable to the consumers. We call this initiative Organic Thelawala. For more on the initiative please read our blog here : https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/empowering-thelawalas-naveen-seri/. As you have read from the article, our push-cart vendors are very spirited and some of the areas where the push-cart vendors need help are in improving their soft skills, some areas where we see a scope of improvement are:
- Greet customers
- Hygiene skills
- Upsell and cross sell
- Communication skills
- Help sell and find new market opportunities : As discussed in About TruTrade page helping farmers the sell their produce and getting them a higher price is the most empowering act that TruTrade is doing. We have just scraped the surface and we feel that we have a huge potential to expand into new channels. With the introduction of Organic Thelawala we have shown an uncanny ability to think unconventional. We would love to do more of such unconventional and innovative ways of selling. If you think we have new opportunities that we can get into, please reach out to us.
- Organic farming training : TruTrade relies on both its internal resource persons and also external faculty to train it’s farmers on organic farming practices. Any farmer that produces their crops without the use of synthetic pesticides and chemicals can be said to be practising organic farming. However there are atleast 7-8 different organic farming methodologies available and practiced worldwide. TruTrade invites external trainers to share their expertise with the farmers. If you are an existing organic farmer or are teaching in an university, please reach out to us stating your area of expertise and we will make sure to revert to you.
- Research and development : You will be surprised on how less the focus has been on research and development in the area of organic farming. TruTrade works with a lot of farmers across multiple crops, if you think you would like to do any R&D in the field of organic farming and would like to access our farmer base, please do let us know, we would be glad to collaborate.
- Write project proposals and fundraising : Being a not for profit organization, we are always scouting for innovative ways to raise money. If your expertise is in writing project proposals and fundraising, and you have a good understanding of the fundraising landscape, we need you very much !!! This is one of the most critical needs for TruTrade.
- Program management : At any given time, we work on multiple programs. One of the areas that we feel the need to improve is our capability on program management. So, if you are a project and program management professional with expertise on running large programs, please do reach out to us.
- IT development : With technology landscape evolving rapidly, we are constantly on the look out for skills in the area of IT and app development. to meet our needs. If you are a developer and can spare your time and have passion in helping farmers, please do reach out to us.
Last but not the least, the above are NOT the only needs that we have, sometimes we honestly don’t know what we need 😀😀😀 , so please come and help us do better and help us get better, after all TruTrade is for the farmers for the farmers and by the farmers and each one of us has a stake in it and a responsibility to make it succeed !!!