'Whenever we get time'

Guddi Crafts began as a small initiative in rural Assam, with a simple idea, using embroidery to create livelihoods for women. Most of the women we work with are young mothers who spend their days caring for children and running their homes. So, when do they work? Their answer is almost always the same: “Whenever we get time.”

It has been nearly four years since we started, and what began as a way to provide income has grown into something larger. Along the way, we’ve realized that empowering women isn’t only about financial independence. It’s also about helping them trust themselves, nurture their own well-being, and better care for the ones they love. Guddi Crafts is, at its heart, a story of women finding time, finding purpose, and finding themselves.

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In Their Words

  • Priyanka

    "My family was laughing at my first earnings. They said how are you so happy with such an amount. I told them it didn't matter. It was the first time I had been paid for my work."

  • Pranali

    "When I started embroidering, they would laugh at me. Slowly they stopped laughing. Then I bought a scooty. Then they started avoiding me."

  • Purnima

    "She would be so annoyed cause her child would cling to her all the time. She even broke down a few times. She couldn't leave her kid for even a few minutes cause the child would start howling. But ever since she started embroidering, the child seems to okay without her mother. She even went to the class by herself."

The Person Behind Guddi Crafts

Guddi Crafts was founded by Priyamvada Trivedi in December 2022 in Assam. Priyam’s family has deep roots in the region. Her parents manage a tea plantation, and her brother, Arjun Trivedi, started the Karunar Kheti Trust and Selenghat Valley School. Priyam completed her schooling in Lucknow before moving to the US for higher education. She holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University and a PhD in Political Science from the University of Michigan. She has worked on projects such as Costs of Contention and Sexual Violence and Armed Conflict with researchers at the Peace Research Institute Oslo, and has also assisted on a World Bank supported project to build a dataset on electricity access using nighttime satellite images. After her PhD, she worked at Ashoka University as Associate Director of the Trivedi Center for Political Data and as a Visiting Assistant Professor in Political Science. She later moved to Bangalore to work with Amuse Labs as a Senior Project Manager. Priyam now works as a Visiting Livelihood Development Researcher with the Karunar Kheti Trust in Upper Assam.