Garlands and flowers offered to gods on a daily basis in temples and households will be converted into incense sticks in Udaipur, Rajasthan's lake city. This will involve training and employing hundreds of unemployed and poor women.

It is a two-pronged initiative. First, it will help unemployed women to find jobs and second, it will check pollution in lakes as these flowers were being immersed in the lake waters, said M Square Foundation Chairman Mukesh Madhwani.

Under the novel initiative of the Foundation, the flowers will be dried and turned into powder form to make incense sticks. Hundreds of unemployed women from the district would be trained to make incense sticks from them.

The M Square Foundation has been taking initiatives to provide employment to many people by making them skilled. The herbal incense sticks will be made by crushing flowers into powder form.

This will help unemployed women who will get newer opportunities to earn a living, he added.

The money earned from selling the incense sticks will be distributed among those poor women while part of it will be spent for other social work, too.

Initially, two renowned temples have been shortlisted to start the drive. These are Eklingji temple and Saras temple which attract many devotees from India and abroad, said Madhwani, adding that two more temples will be shortlisted soon.

"Once we have more skilled people and machinery ready, we will spread it to other temples as well," said Madhwani.
(IANS)