Rashmi Sawant

Rashmi Sawant

Director, Culture Aangan

India

An acclaimed entrepreneur leading a successful enterprise contributing to the conservation of bio-diversity, environment, arts, crafts and promoting rural livelihood.

Achievements:

  • Conceptualized and organized first time ever a broad city based international cultural festival- Mumbai Festival 2005. The Managing Committee was convened under the Chairmanship of Mr. Anand Mahindra, Managing Director, Mahindra and Mahindra. The committee constituted of the likes of Dr. Vijaya Mehta, Shri Nana Chudasama, and Shri Siddhartha Kak etc. The festival was first ever private public partnership and had around 11 vertical festivals under it spanning over 15 days completely supported by the Ministry of Tourism and Culture, Government of India and Government of Maharashtra.
  • Conceptualized and organized the first time ever Mango festival in Mumbai in 2001; creating a direct link between the mango farmers and consumers. The festival, for the first time, created a system of Fair Price Fair Quality. A quality grading system gave the consumer the choice of the mangoes. The festival resulted in establishing permanent trade links between the farmers and the consumers thus almost eliminating the middlemen.
  • Showcased first time ever Indian traditional arts and tribal crafts in international festival like Edinburgh Festival, Scotland and Errigal Arts festival, Ireland
  • Organized under one brand identity, 4000 women in Sindhudurg under the Self Help Schemes. The brand, Hirkani, was launched in the retail markets of Mumbai and Goa. The women were grouped and imparted with training in producing quality food products.
  • Revived the dying tribal puppetry art from of the village Pinguli ; leading to the conservation of the art form and establishing a source of income for the tribal puppeteers
  • Selected to represent India in the Training workshop for Home stay and Agro tourism development organised by the Asian Productivity Organisation in Malaysia.
  • Invited to present a paper on Indigenous tourism at the World Indigenous Tourism Conference held in Quebec, Canada.
  • Selected as one of the 9 social businesses across the globe for participation in the Impact Booster program by the Dutch Government, Netherlands.