FLO Kolkata brought together 70 community women from different FICCI FLO Skilling Centres across Kolkata for a Practical Baking Workshop under its Food & Agro Processing Initiative. The women participated with the support of Calcutta Foundation. The session was deliberately structured around learning by doing. Rather than limiting participants to demonstrations, the workshop encouraged them to volunteer at different stages of preparation and gain first-hand familiarity with the techniques.
This created a more immersive learning environment and helped women approach baking with greater confidence. Participants worked with both basic and festive ingredients and learnt six preparations: Marble Cake, Sponge Cake, Nankhatai, Chocolate Cookies, Eggless Chocolate Pudding and Fruit Cream Spread. Ms. Prerna Churiwal led the practical baking training, introducing participants to accessible techniques and product preparation methods. The training also demonstrated methods using both a gas oven and an OTG, making the learning more adaptable to the equipment available within individual homes.
The finished preparations were tasted by the participants, providing an immediate and tangible culmination to the learning experience. More importantly, the workshop enabled women to see baking not simply as a domestic skill, but as something that could potentially be developed into a small-scale commercial offering.
FLO Kolkata’s approach to community skilling is centred on creating practical pathways towards economic participation. For women who may not be in a position to take up conventional employment because of household responsibilities or childcare, a home-based food enterprise can offer a more flexible alternative. The skills acquired through this workshop can potentially be applied to made-to-order products, festive offerings, and other small-scale baking opportunities.
The Chapter also intends to support participants beyond the training room. Assistance with packaging and product presentation, together with guidance on social-media-based marketing, will help women understand how a skill can progress towards a marketable product. This creates an important bridge between learning, enterprise development and eventual sales.
The workshop reflects FLO Kolkata’s larger vision for the Food & Agro Processing Initiative: to use food-related skills as an entry point into wider opportunities for women.
What begins as baking instruction can create possibilities around entrepreneurship, self-employment, financial contribution to the household, and greater personal confidence.
By bringing women from multiple Skilling Centres together and providing them with a common platform for experiential learning, the initiative also strengthens FLO Kolkata’s community skilling ecosystem and its focus on ensuring that skills acquired have the potential to translate into sustainable livelihood opportunities.