MAUSAM & OTHER FAMILY INSTITUTIONS

FAMILY INSTITUTIONS

Our Money…Our Bank..Our Decision!

Microfinance initiatives of CECOEDECON with Rural Women

With international organizations pushing to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, CECOEDECON invent numerous self-help groups (SHGs) in Jaipur District of Rajasthan and scaled up its efforts to empower women. CECOEDECON’s micro-financing initiative, aims to enable the poor rural women in the province of Rajasthan, India, to improve their socio- economic and political status along with livelihoods and quality of life. CECOEDECON organized rural women in Self Help Groups (SHGs) and began the journey of women empowerment.

Of the one billion people in India’s workforce, 94% work in the “unorganized sector. The unorganized sector consists of non-unionized jobs such as domestic assistants, construction workers, and road-side stall holders. A silent majority of this unorganized sector workforce consists of mothers, who in addition to working for wage labor, agriculture, also run their households and they do not posses property in their names. Since banks do not always acknowledge these types of employment, banks often deny these SHGs access to savings, loan, and credit services. This lack of access to capital hampered financial security and upward mobility. So, SHG leaders often face inability to take loan from Banks.

CECOEDECON was at Phagi and women complaining for non-cooperation of Bank. It decided that we will organize our own Bank! Initiative was launched in 2004 at Phagi after getting Cooperative Registration and it was named “Apni Sahakari Samiti.’ Now financial support and transaction is in their access and they feel comfortable to see women managers to deal with.

ST/ SC women posses a poor economic status and has no source of livelihood security in Rajasthan. Association with the cooperative has made a change in their life. The cooperative also deals with external partners like NABARD and SIDBI.

The movement has transformed women’s lives through empowering them financially- socially and politically. CECOEDECON helped the women to build financial security, organizational support networks, and leadership skills. In recent years, it has become a significant institution for women to link up. NABARD and National Institute for Rural Development (NIRD) have declared it a successful model. CECOEDECON has 4530 SHGs in its operating area with 63421 members.Following the success of Phagi cooperative model, CECOEDECON registered Women Cooperatives at four blocks. While working with small salt producers at Nava, in Nagaur District organization realized that they need financial and organizational support to launch their own iodized produce to come out from the exploitation of companies. All the salt producers of the area were mobilized and organized to establish cooperative and today they are independent financially to launch their own product. The details of each cooperative are as follow;

Shahbad Cooperative was registered in a situation when all the Banks in the area were in the loss due to non repayment of loan under various government schemes. It was the first cooperative of the Shahbad and nobody supposed that it would be a successful endeavor. Tribal are not aware about financial issues and mediator, local money lender exploit them through varied forms of lending money. CECOEDECON made them aware about all the issues and educated to take loan, utilization for livelihood generation and repayment of amount timely. Currently this is one of the best cooperative in the region and Bank Managers interact with Cooperative Managers for understanding the community dynamics.