Dr (Ms) Manjula Jagatramka, is a Ph.D in Textiles & Clothing from S.N.D.T.University, Mumbai. She has taught at various Home Science Colleges through out India .

She has been trained in Entrepreneurship & she also has a certificate in Business Management for Voluntary Service Organizations from NMIMS.

Currently she is a Trainer in Entrepreneurship & Marketing of hand made textiles and crafts

She has taught at various Home Science Colleges through out India. She has been trained in Entrepreneurship at NMIMS (Mumbai). She also has a certificate in Business Management for Voluntary Service Organizations from NMIMS. Currently she is a Trainer in Entrepreneurship & Marketing of hand made textiles and crafts.

She is very keen to setup institutions/organizations which are able to impart/develop education and other entrepreneurial skills leading to the overall growth and empowerment of individuals generally and women specifically in a practical and sustainable manner particularly in the fields of handcrafted textiles and crafts which are her special strengths.

She has been working with the underprivileged in Mumbai, conducting training programmes in Income-generation skills, such as embroidery, tailoring etc. She has also developed Instruction manual and other training material for them.

Simultaneously, she has been also running a small outlet whereby she organizes regular sales for the products made by these groups. She has been really keen to do something about the heritage textiles. She has been teaching these skills so that there are more and more people who can appreciate these traditional crafts. She firmly believes that its time we contemporise our traditional skills and come out with products which suit the taste of the modern day consumers at the same time retaining their traditional features.

She looked for non-traditional avenues for a career. She prefered to do what is missing and required to be done. If the need matches her abilities, she would rather work for achieving those needs. She has always preferred to do active community work and feel the need to share her knowledge and skills to promote a more equitable world. She has been fortunate enough to have acquired very good education. Hence she does feel a strong urge to spread education where there is illiteracy. Since she has been trained on various income generating – vocational skills such as tailoring, embroidering, printing, painting, designing etc., she trains and imparts these skills to those unfortunate who have missed these opportunities. Since such an effort would definitely provide sustainable economic development where there is poverty.

She has taught in a very formal University System for the first 15 yrs of her career. At one point she started feeling that she is working only to get that pay-packet. As a result she was losing interest in her University career. It was then, that a Senior Professor in her Department introduced her to an NGO working in Community Based Projects. She got the opportunity to teach the trainers, and eventually got exposed to the young girls in the slums, who were school drop-outs. She helped them to produce goods which could be sold and further fetch money for their sustenance. That certainly gave her a new understanding about the scope this newly found activity had. Since then she has been progressing in this direction. One after another she kept on upgrading her own skills such as Business Management and Entrepreneurship. Her career path took her to understand Gender Issues and Human Rights too.