| Technology & Innovation
Project Aranaya Kala: Weaving Equity from the Hills
Focus: Cultural sovereignty, gender equity, and climate-smart livelihoods—rewired through community ownership and blockchain innovation.
Bangladesh’s $46 billion garment industry powers 84% of the country’s exports, yet its prosperity ends at the gates of Dhaka’s factories. In the remote hills of Khagrachari, Tripura and Chakma women continue a 1,200-year-old backstrap weaving tradition with no formal banking, unpaved roads, and zero legal protection for their designs. Middlemen extract up to 90% of the retail value, while multinational brands lift Indigenous motifs with impunity. The result: underpayment, cultural erasure, and outmigration that threaten not just livelihoods, but the ecological knowledge embedded in every thread.
Aranaya Kala reverses that spiral.
Capacity Catalyst
The Shirin Sajmila Indigenous Innovation Center, in collaboration with anthropologists, psychologists, and business scholars from the University of Chittagong, conducted a door-to-door needs assessment across 312 Tripura households in Barapara village. Over 11 months, we delivered twelve immersive workshops in the Tripura language covering:
Each loom now connects to a QR-powered traceability matrix, which authenticates the origin of every fabric from weaver to buyer. Resulting in:
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112% Rise in median household income
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98% reduction in middleman dependence
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First recorded digital identity for 150+ designs, tagged with Creative Commons and Indigenous IP riders
| quick numbers
REGENERATIVE INFRASTRUCTURE
AranyaKart—a trilingual marketplace in Tripura, Bangla, and English—represents the next leap. Not just an e-commerce site, it’s a decentralized economic engine where:
A living-wage algorithm enforces a non-negotiable price floor
Buyers can add value voluntarily via a “Pay What It’s Worth” slider
Surplus funds auto-route to a community treasury backing maternal health and STEM scholarships for girls
To ensure generational inclusion, non-weaving youth are being trained in:
Data analytics
Fulfillment
logistics
Content and
digital marketing
Already, 60% of site development and back-end logistics roles are held by tribal youth.
Sovereign Governance
Control doesn’t just shift—it returns. Aranaya Kala is governed by the Barapara Tribal Council Cooperative, with support from pro bono IP jurists. Every uploaded pattern:
Why It’s Groundbreaking
For the first time, Indigenous women gain direct market access, ownership shares, and participation in a digital economy shaped in their own language. Every training module, platform button, and governance clause centers cultural fluency and community agency.
This model confronts the historic barriers of extractive pricing, legal invisibility, and digital exclusion by embedding rights into code and revenue into health and education. It rewrites trade as repair.
Plant-dyed yarns, hand-spun cotton, solar drying—all practices rooted in ancestral ecological wisdom—position Aranaya Kala as a climate-positive alternative to fast fashion, contributing to SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption) and SDG 13 (Climate Action).
equity
justice
climate
resilience
Impact in numbers
5000+
Beneficiaries served through enhanced physiotherapy and rehabilitation services
03
New Global Partnerships established, bringing in fresh technical know-how and resources to SARPV’s programs
200+
Children with disabilities integrated into schools, boosting attendance and inclusion.
100%
Increase in data accuracy, enabled by the introduction of digital monitoring and evaluation tools
STORIES OF CHANGE
These are stories of resilience, of lives disrupted by tragedy and rebuilt through care, courage, and community support. Each journey is a testament to what’s possible when help arrives at the right time.
Hazrat, Age 50
| Overcoming Physical and Social Barriers
Hazrat’s life in a rural village changed forever when he was struck by a speeding truck on his way home from the fields. Initially dismissed as untreatable due to his remote location, he lived in isolation for months. Project Padkhakhep intervened by facilitating a free surgical procedure performed by visiting orthopedic specialists. With subsequent physiotherapy and specialized footwear to address his leg condition, Hazrat can now comfortably manage his day-to-day farm tasks. He has become a vocal advocate for improved road safety measures, working with community leaders to install speed bumps and raise awareness of safe driving practices.
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| scaling vision
With modest investment and continued academic partnerships, Aranaya Kala will evolve from a single-village pilot into a scalable blueprint for the 45 million+ artisanal workers across South Asia. It offers a live demonstration that sustainable development, women’s agency, and cultural continuity are not competing priorities—but mutually reinforcing systems.
What is woven here is not just cloth, but a future.
