The development of artisanal fisheries faces many challenges. There has been a continuous worsening of the problems affecting artisanal fisheries owing to the depletion of fisheries resources, environmental degradation of coastal areas, and ultimately to the ineffectiveness of governmental strategies in overcoming the obstacles. It is women in fishing societies who often shoulder the burdens of resilience in fisheries and are most vulnerable, whose impacts are unknown. The project aims to establish a cross-generational ethics to sustain fishery resources in the coastal areas that can be passed down to future generations anticipating various problems, as well as proposing socio-economic sustainable development with focus on the women empowerment. Women's are often illiterate, and lack access to training and other opportunities to improve their skills other than marketing. Training courses and upgrading of skills would make available to women adjusting to their domestic duties, which would otherwise prevent them from attending the courses organized by the Government which is mainly attended by the men. This would be done in collaboration with fisheries research institution.

Fisheries, an important sub-sector of Indian agriculture, is dependent on the country’s rich marine and inland water resources. 47% of fish production is derived from the marine sector and 53% from inland water resource. Inland fisheries, much of which occurs through traditional means, comprises of capture and culture of fish from rivers, streams, freshwater lakes, ponds and swamps. However, artisanal fisheries faces many challenges, which have been heightened owing to the depletion of fisheries resources, environmental degradation of coastal areas and impacts due to climate change. The proposed project aims to establish cross-generational ethics to consider how natural resources (fisheries) can be passed down to future generations; anticipating the environmental problems of the future (overfishing and climate change), as well as proposing solutions (simple aquaculture techniques); designing social and economic systems for sustainable development within the limits of natural resources and the environment (fisher-woman empowerment and poverty alleviation).
The overall goal of the project is to improve socio-economic conditions and community participation in preserving fisheries resources through a diversification programme with a focus on woman empowerment that includes awareness, training and capacity building in simple aquaculture technologies, processing and market linkages including institutional linkages to impart skill and technical knowhow at each level of the adoption process. A livelihood diversification approach recognizes that each fishery participant needs to generate their livelihood in one way or another, and resilience is enhanced if those livelihoods can be achieved from a diversity of sources, rather than having each individual relying just one wild fish stock or set of stocks. It is therefore useful to encourage multispecies fishing, and facilitate newer, sustainable, eco-friendly culturing practices and promote means of increasing the market value of the produce.
We initially mobilized the community from the cluster of four villages from Goa in the formation of a "Fish Farmers’ Club" group that recognizes their role in adopting and facilitating to bring development to the communities within and beyond their area of expertise. The club was registered under the NABARD farmers’ club program and was inaugurated with the club name “United Agri –Aqua Farmers’ Club”. Under the umbrella of this club, many project activities were carried out with the support of members to accomplish the planned objectives. The club decided at the beginning of the project that training programs and workshops needed to be practical, hands-on sessions for maximum effectiveness. Hence we have been working closely with various institutions and government agencies to undertake these as multi-part training programs.
For effective dissemination of aqua-farming technologies, it was essential to involve and connect all stakeholders to recognized institutions to facilitate the technology transfer and dissemination process. Exposure visits were carried out to fisher farmers, including women, for introducing newer concepts of fish farming. In the transfer of the farming technology, demonstration set-ups were carried out at suitable village sites to establish the technical and economic viability and to impart skill, technical knowhow, and facilitate the adoption process. Demonstration and trainings were imparted, mostly to the women, for the value addition and processing of fish products. Another important output of the project were visual documents preparation for ease of learning and further dissemination of aquaculture technology. Overall, the project helped to identify new venues to adopt more systematic & sustainable fishing techniques to increase profitability, which includes activities like sustainable culture production, processing, packaging, branding, marketing and value-addition.