Champa’s Story: The Mycologist Maven (A Photo Essay)

Champa Harijan was born in Bodmajiguda, a village in Koraput district, to a daily wage labourer’s family. With just an elementary school education, she has been part of MSSRF for nearly two decades, including at the Tribal Agro-Biodiversity Centre (TAbC), since its inception.

In her early days at the foundation, she worked in the garden. Slowly, she was roped into working in the laboratory as an assistant, cleaning bottles, and cutting up boiled potatoes.

When a lab technician in-charge of mushroom cultivation left, Champa got trained to take over from her, a process she described with great attention to the most minute details: a process entailing agar powder, UV light, heat, paddy straw and air-tight bottles!

To date, Champa has also trained a number of village men and women on mushroom cultivation. She noted that with their shelf life of two weeks, mushroom production is a sound income generating activity. As a trainer with a regular income, Champa’s story is a study in resilience.

She has not only broken the shackles of caste, gender and patriarchal family structures, as an important contributor to her family income, but she is also a role model for her community. Champa didn’t let her lack of education to be an obstacle and persevered to work her way up MSSRF’s ladder as a dynamic staff trainer. We hope she will continue to inspire many more young girls and women in the villages of Koraput.

Story by Meher Gadekar, Senior Fellow; Photos Courtesy TAbC