North East Network (NEN) has been building capacity of women’s groups and youth from rural areas in the districts of East, West and South West Khasi Hills and Ri Bhoi through various programmes, since 2016. Through these engagements, the participants have also expressed their concerns over lack of livelihood opportunities for them in rural areas. Meghalaya being a tourist destination for both domestic and foreign tourist and, as per the statistics of Meghalaya Tourism Department more than ten lakh tourists, visited Meghalaya in 2017. Therefore, with the objective of tapping potential livelihood opportunities for rural families through tourism, NEN organised a programme on exploring livelihood opportunity under rural home stay, in collaboration with Association for Conservation and Tourism (ACT), on February 20 2019, at Eldorado Guest House Shillong. Raj Basu and Jashoda Chetteri from ACT were the resource persons. All together 55 participants from districts of East, West, South West Khasi Hills and Ri Bhoi, participated and benefited from the programme. A follow up of more in-depth technical rural residential training is in the pipeline.
