Empowering Women's with Sustainable Livelihood

Dear friends & Supporters

many warm Greetings from RSKS India family!

Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose. This is the rule of game. Yes it is true that situation of losing de-motivates us to achieve our goal. At the same time, it teaches us a lesson to convert this failure into an opportunity by adopting strong willingness inside us and using our potential at its best. Today we are sharing the story of our failure when our organization “RSKS” (Rajasthan Samagra Kalyan Sansthan) has failed in drastic manner.

Year 2001, The programme name was “Women SHG programme”. The major objectives of this programme was “to bring an integrity among BPL (Below poverty line) women in villages of Ajmer district (Rajasthan, India) with socio-economic empowerment. In villages, there were lots of social problems in society such as: caste system, Purdah system,Traditional evils, Conservative ETC Even though SHG was a new name for everyone at that time and no one was aware about this term, not even bank officers.

For achieving the goal, RSKS has visited several villages for base line survey and conducted meetings with them and tried to bring awareness among them towards “SHG programme” that they can take credit from the bank to encourage their small savings and to fulfilling their socio-economic requirements. RSKS told them that they can be free from the high interest chain, which is harassing from the local lenders from long time. Many years ago, BPL families have given their gold jewelleries as mortgage to these lenders and still they are paying interest only, in fact sometimes their next generations also pay the interest still they could not take their property back. So their financial condition in not to be improved for many upcoming years.

Initially, RSKS team has made 7 SHG including 79 BPL village women. But at the beginning, BPL women did not take our words seriously, they thought either it was a joke or we were showing them a lie dream. This was the beginning of our failure phase. When RSKS went to bank to open their account, there was a big problem that either bank officers were not aware about SHG or they were acting to be unknown. They denied providing loan to these women because according to their opinion, BPL women will not pay back this loan to them due to their poverty. This was the biggest phase of failure because that time our 7 SHG were on the stage to close definitely. We were feeling helpless in every aspect. The reason if banks will not provide loans, we cannot change the guidelines of bank. We were broken, our efforts of last 2 years has gone zero. Unfortunately SHG programme has closed in August 2002. It was the moment when we got this title “FAILURE”. We feel de-motivated and insulted at that time because- “Success always hugs you in private, but failure always slaps you in Public”

We were Failure, But still we had one thing alive i.e. “Hope”. We did not change our decision because we heard winners change the world by their decisions while losers change their decisions. We were stuck to our decisions and we organized meetings many times, we cried, we stressed, we disturbed but we thought again and again to come out from the zone of failure. We admitted that we were lacking somewhere or our efforts were not enough. So, now we had changed our focus from SHG to loan facility. We visited Banks again, organized many meetings with Bank officers, BDO officer, District Administrator to explain our objectives in details. We visited many target villages with these heads to show them practically the worst situation of BPL women. This time our strategy has worked and slowly they started to convince with our programme, we worked to connect them emotionally with the problems of BPL women in villages. Initially, they became ready to provide short term loan but they kept a condition that if RSKS will take their guarantee to pay this loan on time. RSKS became ready to accept their condition and first we worked on 3 SHGs groups to provide loan to SHG as a sample study. Also RSKS has inspired these 3 SHG groups to save their small savings and utilised this loan amount in various self empowerment programmes such as goat farming, dairy farming, other agricultural activities, stitching etc. Fortunately, not only women have paid back this amount to the banks on time but also they adopted this resource as their livelihood policy. A big evolution has started as RSKS staff members were fully motivated by the results as well as a big number of women has started to join SHG now.

Also the day has come now, for which we all are working from many years. Success is 1 percent inspiration and ninety nine percent was perspiration. Our achievement that is : By the time of 2015, a big number of SHG group i.e 1700 were made by RSKS successfully. Also loan of rupees more than 50 crore (500 Million) has sanctioned as well as provided to 22500 women to accomplishing their socio-economic development. Today we feel like winners when we see happiness on their faces; we enjoy our victory when we see their development. We do not speak anything; our results are enough to speak everything. It gives us satisfaction when we see their dreams converting into reality.

A big lesson of learning is “Live like you are going to be dying tomorrow and learn like you are going to live forever”. So definitely RSKS has learnt lots of lessons from this failure, which are:

• After getting failed in 2002, we waited many years for our victory because we believe in “Work hard in silence, let your success make the noise” and it has proved by the results.
• At the earlier stage, we failed and learnt “Do not give up, the beginning is always the hardest”
• Before trying again and again, one thing has motivated us i.e. “ Look into the mirror, you will see the same person who can change your failure into the victory”
• A Journey of thousand miles begins with a single step.
• Our main competition is with ourselves only, if we think our present is better than our past, we win
• After many ups and downs we learnt: “It is necessary to have ups and downs in life, because a straight line also in E.C.G. denotes that we are not alive”.
• We should take risks in life, If we win we lead, if we loose we can guide
• We learnt not to wait for anything because “Stop waiting for things to happen, go out and make them happen”
• We start to believe in hope because “The harder the strugglye, the more glorious the triumph”
• Success is all depends on our thoughts, if we think we will fail, if we decide we will win
• Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light.

Now our organization is using that experiencing to improve ourselves day by day. Whenever we design any strategy, we think in advance that if it would be fail what could be the reason and which step will be taken by us next to recover. We motivate our staff members by explaining that win-lose is just an opinion, if we think we fails, if we decide nobody can stop us to win. At present we are providing monthly Rs. 10 Million as loan to our women with the help of Banks to develop and empower them. Also the recovery percentage of loan from these women is absolutely 100 percent, which makes us happy and motivates to work continuously. Definitely this figure showing our success to the world, showing that yes we were failure and this failure has given us a direction to win the world. Now, RSKS learnt that we want to fly and run, also wants to fall down but we never wants to stop. Because the late former president of India Mr. APJ Abdul Kalam said that-

Do not take rest after the first victory, because if we failed more lips are waiting to say that our first victory was just a luck”

And yes we are not taking the rest because still, many more winnings are yet rest to come.

Many thanks again for your valuable support!!

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