Project Name: Adivasi Tea Leaf Marketing (ATLM) paperless workflow
Organisation: ACCORD
Project Location & Coverage Area: Gudalur, Tamil Nadu
Project URL: www.adivasi.net
Area of intervention: Empowerment

In 1999, AMS established the Adivasi Tea Leaf Marketing Society (ATLMS) to empower Adivasis to better market the produce from their tea leaf plantations. ATLMS buys fresh leaf from individual Adivasis and sells to processing companies to ensure better prices and avoid exploitation of individual planters.
In 2012, ATLMS, which used to work with paper receipt books and registers, successfully implemented a mobile app for processing the orders and ingesting them into the database in a paperless workflow. The entire solution was designed, tested and rolled out by an all-Adivasi team using the Open Data Kit.
The use of mobile technology reduced unnecessary paper work and human errors during the data collection from field to office by ATLM workers. People use mobile tablets to enter data in the system, which records the kilos of tea, member name, member code etc. at the time of tea bags collection from ATLM members at village. The data saved to the app is sent to the system through Wifi connectivity to keep a record of the process. The entire mechanism is now being managed through mobile application. The main purpose of the project was to demonstrate that with a little support and capacity building, communities can harness their own imagination and will to effect positive change. The AMS and ACCORD strive to empower the Adivasis of the Nilgiris, rather than provide them with ready-made solutions.

Reach & Road Ahead

Today, AMS is the political voice of the Adivasi community in Gudalur valley and it has more than 12,500 members spread across more than 200 villages in the Gudalur and Pandalur taluks of the Nilgiris district in Tamil Nadu.
By putting the reins in the hands of the Adivasis right from the beginning, this project was born sustainable. The project has grown quickly and rapidly with little heavy-handed intervention on the part of AMS. By delegating even duties such as training to the Adivasis, the programme has achieved a level of adoption that usually requires far more extensive hand-holding.