On the occasion of Internation Women’s Day South Tripura district’s Kalashi Cluster Level Federation has been conferred with DAY-NRLM National Awards for empowering of women through micro credit under Tripura Rural Livelihood Mission. They took the award from Union Minister Giriraj Singh.
The Kalashi CLF was adjudged as one among the 13 best performing CLFs of the country shortlisted for this award. The award distribution programme was held at Vigyan Bhavan in New Delhi.
Since inception in 2018 the members of Kalashi Federation have been endeavoring to empower the SHG members socially and economically, by sensitizing and mobilizing every deprived rural household by bringing them into the SHG fold.
The federation believes it is a strong platform for them to realize their dream of becoming Self-Governed, Self-Managed and Self-Sufficient. So far the federation has been able to mobilize 95% of deprived households in SHG fold and believes in promoting the concept of Self-Reliant.
Main objective of collective effort is to overcome the inherent limitations of small and informal groups–such as limited resources, capacity, and negotiation and bargaining powers, and an inability to deal with the outside world– such as the government eco-system, mainstream institutions, markets, etc.
The federation believe that the benefits of federations include those arising from (a) economies of scale, (b) reduction in transaction costs, (c) reduction in default rates at all levels, (d) value added services, (e) reduction in the cost of promoting new SHGs (that is, the cost of reaching out to every poor woman) and (f) increasing levels of financial discipline and accountability among SHGs.
Apart from the above benefits other objectives of the federation are: inter-group rotation of funds; accessing bulk loans and grants from external sources; gradual deliberation of functions to members SHGs and Village Organization by promoting leadership skills and governance among SHG members, and developing poor people’s own institutions.
The Federations have anonymously decided to work on the below following dimensions.
1. Health: Under this dimension they are trying to improve the health status of pregnant women and children. To give more impetus to effort, in convergence with the health department, especially ICDS the Federation is trying to enroll as much as benefices into the schemes, their main role for this is to sensitize and mobilize the SHG members. To give an institutional status of this effort the Federation has deliberated this responsibility to the Social Action Sub-Committee.
2. Education: The Federation believes in the saying “if you educate a man you are educating a single individual but if you educate a woman you are educating the entire family. With this concept the federation is trying to mitigate the phenomenon of dropping out of girl child from school, by leveraging convergence with PRI Body and other line departments to install sanitary latrine unit in interior schools.
3. Livelihood: In align with the main objective of DAY-NRLM, to mitigate rural poverty and also to address one of the main Sustainable Development Goal 1 and 2, the federation always strives to enhance the family income of SHG members by leveraging financial linkage from banks and on time disbursement of community investment fund. These funds are being used in augmentation of the existing livelihood activities and also to take new livelihood activities. SHG members are involved in various potential income generating activities like micro-enterprise, livestock rearing, agriculture, fishery etc, for better market linkage and value addition. The federation is taking help from the technical partner Sesta Development Services and line departments. So far with the assistance of TRLM the federation has been able to mobilize Rs 3.18 Crore corpus fund and this fund is being rotated among the SHG members with repayment rate of more than 95 % and has been able to earn interest approximately Rs 36 Lakh as on date.
4. Right and entitlements: The Federation also believes in working for the rights of women. In convergence with PRI bodies the federation is constantly participating in Gram Shabas to claim their rights and entitlement. The consolidated livelihood plans and demands are being submitted to other line departments through PRI Body.
The objective of the event is to appreciate and acknowledge the grit and determination of women in empowering themselves through livelihoods. There will also be experience sharing by CLF members on management of Gender Justice Centres. These women are managing the Gender Justice Centres with an aim to bring gender equity and eliminate gender discrimination.
The event will also showcase films on Gender Justice Centre management and Livelihoods Planning which have been compiled incorporating video-clips from different states.
