Someone has rightly said, “Little girls with dreams become a woman with vision. “While everyone dreams of greatness, only some achieve it through their hard work and perseverance. The little girl that grew up to be a woman with vision is Divya Rawat, or The Mushroom Girl of Uttarakhand.
Divya Rawat was born and brought up in a village named Chamoli in Uttarakhand. She completed her schooling from there. At the early age of seven, losing her father made her grow faster in life than other kids.
She decided to move to Delhi from Uttarakhand to pursue her Undergraduate and Master’s degree in Social Work. She saw how people from her state were living and toiling hard in these big cities and earning minimum wages. It saddened her as she saw villages filled with life turn into ghost villages.
Her wake-up call came after the 2013 Kedarnath Floods, which affected the livelihood of thousands of people of the state, be it from the agriculture sector or tourism. She wanted people to find employment within the state. It is rightly said, “Where there is a will, there is a way.” She came to know about the expanding mushroom business that was slowly building up in Dehradun. She decided to leave her life in the metro city and move back to the hills.
Everyone thought it was a foolish decision, but she had nerves of steel and a firm determination. She decided to start cultivating mushrooms to create a livelihood.
Mushroom is one of the best cash crops. It needs less space, and the climatic condition to grow mushrooms here in Uttarakhand is quite ideal. Divya started growing mushrooms in bamboo racks. She wanted the cultivation to be made simple so that it could be cultivated in common households. With her thorough research and training, she finally decided to grow three varieties – Button, Oyster, and Milk Mushroom.
Farmers who were affected by the flood decided to join in with her. Crops gave them 8 to 10 Rupees per kilogram, while Mushroom gave them a whopping 80 to 100 Rupees per kilogram. Divya has helped thousands of people become an entrepreneur. “You can start growing mushrooms with a minimum investment of 60 Rupees,” she says.
With her family’s support and the blessings of people, she finally started her own Soumya Foods Pvt. Ltd. in 2013. Since then, she has been training thousands of people across the country to be their own bosses. In her journey, she has not forgotten the desolated villages. She reached out to people of those villages and trained them in mushroom farming. Recently Divya Rawat Cordyceps Training center is established by her to empower locals and generate employment.
Divya Rawat mushroom training center gain public attraction in no time. Her dream of successfully bringing people back home from cities is slowly but surely coming true. Divya Rawat has brought a change for sure. People are returning to their villages to learn about mushroom farming. For all her efforts, she was awarded the Udhyaan Pandit by Uttarakhand Government. She was also awarded the Nari Shakti Sammaan Award by the President in 2017.
Her true reward is the happiness of people and the reverse migration, she says. We wish that Our Mushroom Girl fulfills her dreams and keeps making us proud.