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Background
Considerable
experience and knowledge had been built up over a long period,
working with women groups in remote village areas in Dharmpuri and
Selam district of Tamilnadu and from this came the project that
started in October 2000.
The project sets out to address the many poverty and violence
(against women) related problems for villages ranging from those
who have not yet organised a
self-help
groups for women to those where the groups are well established.
A Groups are the
vehicle through which the services are delivered to the women
members and an extensive range of project services have been
organised in a variety of ways.
The
project tasks are therefore to :
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Establish
groups in villages where previously they did not exist and
provide help and guidance in their operating e.g. identify and
appoint leaders, recruiting members, arranging and conducting
meetings, encouraging member participation and general
appreciation of the practical ways in which the group and its
services can directly benefit the members.
-
Assist
existing groups to evaluate their work and continuously
identify poverty related problems within the groups, in order
to provide them with appropriate technical, management,
administrative and financial support and services.
-
Effectively
carry out the identification of group problems. AID (Tamilnadu)
conducted a series of group workshops and through these were
able to confirm the short and long term problems and needs.
These are unemployment, indebtedness, limited access to
small credits and deep-rooted gender discrimination.
Also limited management skills, lack of networking and
co-operative action experience and poor access to government
resources.
Activities
The
main features of the project are :
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Engage
the groups in the process of learning and empowerment through
member participation in meetings and other events of the
group.
-
Provide
continuous information and support on organisational
development of groups and combination of groups, micro-credit,
micro enterprises, marketing, poverty reduction and violence
against women.
-
Initiate
bi-monthly inter-group workshops for dialoguing, networking,
learning from one another and to make full use of government
resources.
-
Provide
credit support through local banks and employment marketing
support to 180 groups in the Federation.
-
Sustain
two cluster groups and one regional level federation to
encourage continuous interactions and common action,
co-operatively.
-
Establish
the federations who will be responsible in future for the
co-operation between the groups at the end of the project.
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Participatory
poverty assessment, planning, action, learning and reflection
through the SHGs.
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Trainers
training SHGs and giving training support to SHGs directly and
also through the many people trained by AID.
-
Building
partnerships between SHGs, banks and local government
authorities through the auspices of AID
-
Self-monitoring
and self-assessment of the project and continuous learning
through reflection and sharing with one another.
The
results and achievements were :
Objectives
The
objective is to create 180 viable self-help groups for 3600 women
and to increase their ability and capacity to deal with the group
organisation and services resolution of their member's poverty
related problems. The project is expected to operate for the
next three years after which time the Federation is expected to
assume co-operative responsibility in 2004.
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