Jinita Das Digal, President of Pengera Village Pachayat and member of the Community Development Forum of Borbam Tea Estate, Assam, India. Image: Copac Media/ETP
Tea garden at dusk, Moran Tea Estate, Assam, India. Image: Copac Media/ETP

Plantation Community Empowerment Programme

Helping resolve systemic issues to the lives of communities living and working across Assam’s tea sector.

A unique, sustainable, grassroots project successfully piloted and now in expansion.

In Assam, India, people who live or work in tea plantations make up nearly 20% of the population and face a range of social issues including limited access to essential services such as education, healthcare, nutrition, water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) and social protection. This negatively impacts the wellbeing of tea workers and their families, as well as their productivity and livelihoods.

  • 2017-2025
  • Status: On-track
Project
Economics
Environment
Equality
Climate resilient agriculture
Decent livelihoods
Empowered safe communities
Equal opportunities
India

Programme overview

The Plantation Community Empowerment Programme (PCEP) is an initiative across 23 tea estates over nine districts of Assam, India. It is a sustainable, grassroots project successfully piloted in three tea estates from 2017 to 2022 and then scaled up to a further 20 tea gardens from 2022 to 2025. PCEP brings together communities and estate management through a unique platform, the Community Development Forum (CDF), to improve the overall well-being of tea workers and their families, and the relationship between management, workers, and other stakeholders in the tea estates. The CDFs achieve this by providing a locally owned mechanism where communities and management can work together to identify and prioritise social issues and to develop and implement solutions.

Programme partners

ETP and five Indian producer companies.

Funding partners: Taylors of Harrogate, Jing Tea, Ostfriesische Tee Gesellschaft GmbH & Co. KG, Lavazza Professional, GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) / German Agency for International Cooperation.

Manjula Kahar, ETP's PCEP Community Mobiliser and a Community Develop Forum member for Moran Tea Estate, Assam, India. Image: Copac Media/ETP

PCEP aims to create a thriving tea sector in Assam by improving the well-being and participation of the wider community. Its end goal is for communities and plantation management to jointly resolve issues around living and working conditions in tea estates, to improve wellbeing for all.

Using CDFs to break down traditional employer-employee relationship barriers, a multistakeholder platform is created where tea estate worker issues can be raised and resolved in partnership with estate management.

CDFs also help communities tackle local issues, including education (such as drop out among school children and low literacy rates among adults), child protection and gender related issues, substance abuse, youth unemployment, access to social security schemes, and issues around WASH (Water Sanitation and Hygiene) among others.

Members of the women’s self-help group of Bukhial Tea Estate, Assam, India. Image: Copac Media/ETP

PCEP leverages a participatory approach to community development. We work with communities to form CDFs and build their skills. Communities then identify and prioritise challenges within their estates, then devise and deliver their own plans to address them.

Forum members include plantation workers and estate management, but also non-plantation workers, young people, women’s rights groups, unions, and development agencies.

Solutions often focus on skills and education, sports, gender rights, leadership, constructive ownership, and a rights-based approach to networking with government for sustainable community development.

23 CDFs are currently functional across each of the 23 tea estates (three pilot gardens and 20 scale-up gardens). These are managed by five tea producing companies in Assam, where they are having a substantial impact on improving tea workers’ lives.

In the endline evaluation of the programme, overall community wellbeing showed strong progress with improvements in areas of education, WASH, health, and economic opportunities.

  • Health and WASH saw progress driven by improved access to drinking water, sanitation facilities, menstrual hygiene support and strengthened emergency health services through CDF advocacy.
  • Economic well-being improved through community savings initiatives, promotion of digital payments, and micro-enterprises for women.
  • Education showed positive improvement with higher school re-enrolment and Joyful Learning Centres (JLCs) supporting first-generation learners.

 

The evaluation also revealed that improved social cohesion was created through enhancing trust and communication between estate management and workers, fostered through regular CDF meetings.

Key achievements: pilot phase
Portrait of Lokhimoni, a tea plucker and Community Development Forum member in Bukhial Tea Estate, Assam, India. Image: Copac Media/ETP
12

CDFs registered as independent legal entities under the Indian Trust Act, with the remaining CDFs in the process of formally registering.

6

Adult Literacy Centres (ALC) have been established in 5 scale-up gardens, reaching 89 adults.

21

Girls Soccer Clubs have been established in 18 scale-up gardens, reaching 624 adolescent girls.

32

Joyful Learning Centres (JLC) have been established across 19 scale-up gardens, reaching 1,311 children.

8,607

people have been facilitated in accessing important documents in 20 scale-up gardens.

15,129

individuals, groups (Self-Help Groups for Women) and households have been facilitated in accessing social security schemes by the government.

Income generation initiatives

by CDFs include sericulture , weaving, and home-made snack making units.

Impact stories
View All
Key contacts

Anjan Bordoloi

Programme Manager

Bharat Nayak

Programme Officer

Neha Das

MEL Officer

Ranjana Das

Country Manager