Economic Growth India Project #3907

Make Women in Rural India Financially Secure

by Seva Mandir

Make Women in Rural India Financially Secure

Project Report | May 1, 2014
Success Story of a Confident Woman

By Atul Lekhra | Incharge Online Donor Communication

Confident Nirmala

Dear Friends,

Greetings from Seva Mandir.

Shishvi is a small village located in Girwa block of Udaipur City, Rajasthan. A five minutes’ walk into the village and you will meet a confident woman running a small shop. Nirmala is the first female in the village to run a shop.

As expected the journey was not easy. Before breaking the societal barriers, she had her family to fight to.

“My husband is into maintenance work. We never had enough money and that created trouble and eventually fights.” Nirmala has three kids- two girls and one boy. Her family was not very supportive.

But Nirmala was determined. She started this shop in 2006. It has been 7 years and she has been increasing her business day by day. She had no education and no money when she thought of opening this shop. She just knew stitching clothes but did not have a sewing machine.

Seva Mandir runs a women’s Self-Help Group in Shishvi where women voluntarily contribute whatever amount they can and mutually agree to save it in their common fund from which small loans can be given to any of their members to meet emergent credit needs. This is exactly what Nirmala was looking for. She happily joined the group, discussed her problem and took a loan of Rs. 10,000. She bought a sewing machine and some cloth from it.

Nirmala then started selling ready-made clothes in Shishvi. This grabbed local women’s attention since this was the only shop with ready-made clothes. Initially she used to sell covertly because the ‘heads’ of the village were against it! But Nirmala stood strong and so did other women.

“All the women here supported and encouraged me. They kept coming to my shop and asked me to be strong as I was doing a good work.”

She returned the first loan in around two years. She then took the second loan of Rs 20,000 from Union bank. She bought saris, more clothes and got more profit. She returned the second loan in 20 months.

After this 18 women took loan together of Rs 25,000 from ZilaUdyog Kendra. In between Nirmala kept taking financial help from Seva Mandir’s self-help group.

Currently there are three shops in Shishvi run by women.

Nirmala earns Rs. 1000 per day from which she keeps Rs. 500 and uses Rs. 500 in buying clothes or other commodities for shop. She makes more than Rs. 1000 in festive season. “I earned Rs. 4000 in Rakhi festival” says Nirmala.

When she started earning respectable money, Nirmala’s family also began to accept her running the shop. They became friendly and encouraged her. “My husband supports me in my work now. In fact he attached some equipment to my sewing machine so that it can run on electricity. Earlier I used to run it manually,” says Nirmala showing her possession-sewing machine.

Nirmala adds confidently that there house was a mud house before. She helped her husband financially in turning it into a cement house. She also participates in decision-making as well.

She is now working with Seva Mandir on one of the projects where she will teach local girls stitching and using sewing machine.

Thank you for your help and support in changing the lives of so many women.

Regards

Atul Lekhra

Links:

Seva Mandir's official website

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Jan 30, 2014
Thank You Friends

By Atul Lekhra | Incharge Online Donor Communication

Dear Friends,

Greetings from Seva Mandir.

Wishing you a very Happy, Prosperous and Wonderful 2014. Thank you friends for extending peace, love and support to all of us in 2013. We look forward to another great year with you. Year by year, our association is getting stronger. Thank you very much for adding happiness in so many lives.

Today I thought of sharing with you two stories, one of Kanku and another of Devli, they both are members of self help group (SHG).

(1). Kanku is a member of SHG named Shakti Mahila Samuh located in Magwas. She has studied till class 8th and has been a member of this SHG since 2001. She is unmarried and lives with her brother. While working with the SHG, she decided to start her own business of provisional store. She consulted with the other group members and they encouraged Kanku for starting the business. She took a room at rent for shop and took loan of Rs. 5000/- for buying stationary items to be kept in her store. Later, she took again an amount of Rs. 5000/- for increasing her items in the store. Now, she’s earning a profit of Rs. 10,000/- (approx.) every month and also repaying the installments and interest every month regularly. She’s very happy with her business and now looking forward to increase her number of items in the shop. The other SHG members and Kanku has realised the importance of SHG as they could get a good source of income through the interloaning system of SHG.

(2). Devli is a member of an SHG named Shakti Mahila Samuh of Mohd. Phalasiya village, since 2002. Her husband earlier worked as a laborer with other brick kilns in Ogna village. In 2008, she and her husband decided to start their own brick kiln business. Therefore she took a loan of Rs. 8000 from her SHG fund and they started their business on a small scale. Her group then applied for a loan under SGSY scheme of government and they were sanctioned Rs. 3,12,500 for different activities. The group provided Rs. 50,000 to Devli from SGSY loan for upscaling her brick kiln business.

Devli’s family constructs 700-1000 bricks each day. They have employed three laborers to support them in their work. She herself works around three to four hours every day. Devli’s estimate is that her family earns a profit of around Rs. 25,000-30,000 per year. Though the income from this business is uncertain during rainy season, she feels that her income has still increased. In future, she plans to increase production as there is a huge demand for bricks in her area and also purchase plastic sheets to keep unburned bricks safe from rain.

Kanku and Devli always give thanks to Seva Mandir who introduced them to Self Help Group.

Once again thank you so much for your continuous support.

Have an awesome year ahead.

Warm regards,

Atul Lekhra

Links:

Seva Mandir's website

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Oct 31, 2013
Securing The Future With Your Support

By Atul Lekhra | Incharge Online Donor Communication

Dear Friends,

Greetings from Seva Mandir.

Hope you are well. Today I thought of sharing with you the story of Premi Bai Lohar who secured her livelihood with the help of self help group.

Premi Bai Lohar lives in Kagmandra, village of Semal panchayat in Badgaon block. She is a member of a self help group since January 2010. Her group comprises of 20 members. The group has been very active from the day of its inception. There has been regular inter-loaning and re-payment in the group.

The group took a loan of Rs. 2,40,000/- from their village corpus in February 2010. Premi Bai received a loan of Rs. 20,000 from the Gram Vikas Kosh (Village Development Fund) for Meenakari business that she was involved in.

“Meenakari” is a traditional form of art which was introduced in the country by the Mughals. It is an art of enameling metals like gold, silver and copper. This form of art has been practiced in the area extensively for the past 30 years and Premi Bai and her husband have been involved in this profession since last 7 to 8 years.

They do meenakari on silver metal. They bring silver from Nathdwara, a neighboring town of Rajsamand district, which is around 80 Km from her village, do meenakari work on it and sell the finished goods in the market.

In the past, due to unavailability of money, Premi Bai and her husband were unable to buy silver in large quantity from the market, due to which they could sell lesser quantity of goods and therefore earned Rs. 4000 (approx.) per month, which was not sufficient to support their family of 7 members.

The loan of Rs. 20,000 provided a boost to their business. They were now able to buy the required raw material in bulk, as a result they could sell larger quantity of finished goods in the market.

Today, Premi Bai and her husband are earning Rs. 8000 per month (approx.) from this business and their economic condition has significantly improved.

This is one of the examples from Self Help Groups. Thank you for being beside us on our journey to development. We really appreciate the trust you have shown in us. Please do let us know if you have any questions.

Thank you again.

Atul Lekhra

Links:

Seva Mandir's official website

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