What's Vermiculture?
Manufacturing simple manure using organic waste and earthworms. All the daily organic waste from a house is collected in a mud pot containing earthworms, which convert the waste to high quality organic manure within a short time. There is a good demand for this in the market and can be sold for a substantial price.

The academy role?
Nrityanjali Academy successfully adopted this project to train women in slums and supported them in forming a self-help co-operative group to produce and market vermi-compost. The academy then gave technical inputs on vermi-compost production techniques and freely supplied all group women with big clay pots.

The procedure?
To produce vermi-compost, the women have to dump all the organic waste of their homes in the clay pot which contains a small layer of wet mud and some earthworms. After a period the worms convert the organic waste into compost which is one of the best eco-friendly manure. Initially the interest levels in the slum women was low. But after seeing their peers making decent amounts by producing and selling the compost with little effort there was a tremendous response from the women. The vermi-culture project was able to address simultaneously the environment and the economic issues and provided the slum women a source of income.

The future?
The academy has identified Area Action Committees out of the Women Mahila Madali(or the Women's associations) and Youth associations in six slums and trained them to interact with the civic authorities directly for project implementation.