Activities within the grant:
The Just Change Trust (Just Change) aims to create a radically different market mechanism that will enable producers, consumers and investors to work together in a cooperative manner for mutual benefit. While Just Change will work on all three aspects, this proposal to the Trusts for a two-year period will focus on bringing the promotional phase to a successful close by ensuring that all the three partners are viable units and establishing a successful model that can be easily replicated in other places. Over the next two years, it plans to reach 1,500 families from the existing four community groups and ensure that the operations are fully self-sustained so as to have impact on the economy of the communities concerned.

The project would benefit 10,000-12,000 families who are producers and consumers. By virtue of a direct linkage, margins can be shared between producers and consumers. While producers would save Rs 500,000 on account of higher price for their produce, consumers would save Rs300,000 through reduced prices annually by the end of the project period. Each branch is expected to break even from year two of operations and have a surplus of Rs5,000 per month, which will be contributed towards creating a corpus at the branch level to support and expand the business. At the end of this phase, the project would demonstrate a model, which will attract social investors for further expansion.

	Increase in annual sales in three branches to Rs9.6 million at the end of year two
	Ensuring profitability and surplus at each branch level after meeting all the costs of operation
	Increased ownership and self management by SHG members and leaders
	60-70 per cent of the goods traded would be procured from the primary producers.