Pabitra Lama Sarmah

Pabitra Lama Sarmah founded Maati Community in 2010, an organization focused on building pathways to women’s advancement and economic empowerment with financial interdependence. Maati is a social enterprise that builds capacity of communities to ensure empowerment for Indigenous Communities in the North East Region with sustainable and holistic interventions in livelihood and education, ensuring innovative solutions to deep-rooted development problems along with access to the confederation of expertise. She also founded Xuta, The Thread Bank Initiative, a project rolled out in 2019 that aims to establish a sustainable wholesale model from a village in Assam ‘Majuli’ with the women weavers of the Mising community. Its purpose is for urban market enterprises and institutions to have a proper supply chain process, which has never been done in this unorganized market in this part of the region. Through this organization, she also works to create a transparent model wherein beneficiaries get an opportunity to showcase their artistic work and earn income a powerful transparent manner. Thus, they feel ownership of their artwork and that their skill of weaving is properly valued.

Pabitra’s leadership in the initiative also allowed for tremendous increase in building financial interdependence, digital visibility, perseverance of art & culture, sustainable solution making, and women’s empowerment.