Written by Erin Young, CraftHER Scholar 2026
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that my week consulting at Forest Post as part of the CraftHER 2026 programme has changed my life.
I came in with a very limited understanding of tribal and indigenous communities, especially of the complexity of the challenges that they face. Such challenges include those posed by nature: displacement caused by landslides; the premature death of a parent due to an elephant stampede; miscarriage due to a fall in the forest. But there are also challenges posed by fellow human beings: the construction of dams across the rivers on which indigenous tribes depend, forcing them to relocate; husbands leaving wives and children to remarry without any financial recompensation. And what has become clear from what I’ve heard is that the indigenous women that Forest Post work with seem to be disproportionately affected by the challenges of tribal living.
There is no doubt that a cultural attitude of accepting things the way they are gives them the resilience to get through these sometimes deeply traumatic adversities. However, there is another factor which seems to be key in allowing them to thrive in the face of difficulty: the unfailing support of other women.
Chiefly, this seems to come from the women in their own community. For instance, following the death of her mother at a very young age, Siji, who makes hair oil for Forest Post and is now a mother herself, was informally adopted by a village elder or chechi. Other women, whose husbands had left them to remarry with no offer of alimony or child support payments, were able to continue to support themselves through the income earned via a women’s collective.
In addition to hearing about these examples of female solidarity within the indigenous communities, I witnessed some with my own eyes during my time at Forest Post. On Wednesday at the manufacturing unit, we had the pleasure of meeting the women who make macrame products, Maya and Sujata and Sujata had brought along her toddler-aged son. As well as providing a macrame masterclass for us scholars, the women had products to complete so that they could be put up for sale on the Forest Post website. Seeing Sujata struggling to proceed with her work whilst also trying to entertain her young son, Maya stepped in to babysit him so that Sujata could focus on her macrame. For something so simple it was really heart-warming to witness, especially since it seemed to come so naturally to Maya to support Sujata in this way. It further consolidated the impression I had built up over the week of the existence of robust female camaraderie among the women in the indigenous forest communities.
In the way that the Forest Post is run, it seems to me that the business perfectly emulates this cultural dynamic of women supporting women. Manju has created a system such that the women are able to earn their own income but in a way that still allows them to carry out their responsibilities as wives and mothers as per cultural expectations. The women work flexible hours, at locations very close to or even within their own community and (as alluded to in the previous paragraph) are welcome to bring their children along to work. Forest Post is also organised such that in addition to strengthening pre-existing bonds between women from the same community, new friendships are cultivated between women from different communities as they work side-by-side. And, as little as she would like to admit it, this is in a large part due to Manju. She is the glue that holds this network of incredible women together.
The fortitude of the women, which is evident in the anecdotes that they have shared, along with the vivacity that they have displayed in our interactions, has left me in complete awe. I am extremely grateful to have witnessed and even briefly been a part of the network of female friendship which appears to me to underpin the Forest Post community.
I sincerely hope that the work we have done over the past week, creating content for Forest Post marketing, does justice in showing just how worthwhile it is to support the brand and more importantly the brilliant women who are its backbone.