By Atul Lekhra | Manager, Online Donor Communication
Dear Friend,
Thank you for supporting our program to empower women. The women empowerment programme of Seva Mandir focuses on bringing women together for creating a common platform of mutual trust and support. The Self Help Group program is an extension of the Women’s Empowerment program under which, the women save up small amounts every month in groups known as SHGs (Self Help Groups). They borrow small loans from their SHGs which help overcome their dependency on traditional money lenders for petty credit needs. The SHG also allows women to set up small business for earning like for opening a ration shop and tailor shops, buying cattle, setting up a flour mill etc. Besides the financial autonomy, the SHG extends a platform for these women to discuss social issues. It strengthens their solidarity, builds their confidence and allows them a space to unload and deliberate solutions.
At present, there are 627 women’s self-help groups with a membership of 9625 women. These groups exist in 168 villages of Udaipur district in southern Rajasthan.
During the past years various income generating initiatives were introduced to help the women of these SHGs. In the last six months following activities were conducted:
Detergent making work: Women from Shisvi village got involved in detergent making work and they produced 825 Kg of detergent, of which they were able to sell 625 Kg.
Stitching and designing work: A group of 30 women from Shisvi village were trained on stitching and designing work. Now they are working for a women enterprise and earning a good amount for their work.
Collection and sale of custard apple: Discussions were done on collection and sale of custard apple. One of the groups has expressed interest in taking up this activity and started working on this.
Fisheries work: 75 women from 6 villages are involved in fisheries work. In this period, these women sold fish for around $1,500.
We are able to introduce all these initiatives for women from rural communities only because friends like you are helping us regularly. Thank you once again for your help and support to our programme.
If you have any comments or feedback, please feel free to write to me at atul.lekhra@sevamandir.org
Regards
Atul Lekhra & Seva Mandir Team
Follow us on: www.facebook.com/sevamandir
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
Support this important cause by creating a personalized fundraising page.
Start a Fundraiser
