Educating women through self help groups a case study of humana people to people india, alwar, rajas

Educating women through Self Help Groups: a case study of Humana People to People India, Alwar, Rajasthan Shalini Singh* Kalpana Depan** Abstract The paper considers the effects of microfinance in empowering women through education and mass awareness. The present paper aims to the study of the social, political and economical impact of the awareness campaigns and mass education started by self help groups. This paper explains the concept of women empowerment and the relation between microfinance and women empowerment. The paper also tries to analyze the role of self help groups in educating women and helping in their economical, social and political empowerment.

By means of a descriptive study, the case�study proposed involves an analysis of work done by Humana People to People India, an organization working in Alwar District of Rajasthan towards Financial education and awareness of women.

Key Words: microfinance, Women empowerment, Self Help Groups, Political Empowerment, Humana people to People India, Social Empowerment, Economical Empowerment, Education.

*Assistant Professor, Biyani Group of Colleges, Jaipur, Rajasthan ** Research Scholar, GCA, Ajmer, Rajasthan

Introduction Role of microfinance in Women empowerment is a much debated topic. However before analyzing the role of microfinance in women empowerment, it is very important to define the concept of women empowerment. Women Empowerment is a broad concept as it includes the overall empowerment of women. According to United Nation’s definition of Women Empowerment-“Women's empowerment has five components: women's sense of self-worth; their right to have and to determine choices; their right to have access to opportunities and resources; their right to have the power to control their own lives, both within and outside the home; and their ability to influence the direction of social change to create a more just social and economic order, nationally and internationally.”

Objective Rural micro financing is defined as “all financial services that are accessible to poor and lowincome rural households and individuals” (IFAD 2009). Microfinance is advocated and promoted by policymakers, development agencies, government officials and politicians as an effective antipoverty intervention, both through the functions it performs and for the potential it carries to improve the livelihoods of poor and vulnerable people especially rural women.

This paper tries to study the role of microfinance in empowering women through education and role of self help groups in providing education to women especially to the ones residing in rural area. The paper gives a brief review of one of the organization i.e. Humana People to People India working in Alwar district of Rajasthan towards women empowerment.

Methodology Numerous works have been done on role of microfinance in women empowerment, but only few works have actually focused on the role of self help groups in educating women. A well known English proverb states that” when you educate a man, you educate a single human being. But, when you educate a woman, you educate a family.” This indicates towards the importance of female education in higher economic growth and stability. This paper is a descriptive study of importance of self help groups in empowering women through education. The paper is divided into four sections. First section introduces the concept of women empowerment. The second section explains the objective behind writing this paper. Later sections are devoted to explaining the relationship between women empowerment and microfinance. It explains the concept of self help groups and their role in female education especially of rural areas. Second last section

analyses the working of Humana people to people India, an organization in Alwar district of Rajasthan working in the similar direction. Last section concludes and reviews the role of self help groups in women education.

Women and Microfinance A gender-based discriminating society tends to suffer from higher level of poverty, stagnant economic growth and poor governance. Women are supposed to be the most vulnerable section of society, especially socially and economically. Microfinance are mainly focused at providing finance to rural poor especially women. MFIs also target women for sustainability reasons: women’s repayment rates are typically far higher than those of men.4 Lower arrears and loan loss rates have an important effect on the efficiency and sustainability of the MFI. Many programs have also found that women tend to be more cooperative in administrative and organizational matters, such as attending group meetings regularly and respecting lending bylaws.

Finally, one of the rationales for the targeting of women by MFIs is that microfinance can be an effective means for empowering women. If the livelihood of a woman is fully dependent on the income generated by the husband, the breakdown of the marriage would mean a disastrous consequence for the woman. Because of this, the woman is likely more eager to accommodate her husband’s interests in order to save the marriage from breaking down. This weaker bargaining position of women gives an upper hand to the male counterpart in any decisionmaking within the household. By putting financial resources in the hands of women, MFIs can help level the playing field and thereby promote gender equality.

Apart from providing economical stability by providing credit to women, self help groups have also emerged as an important means of educating women through local meetings and educational campaigns. Various studies have shown that, with the emergence of self help groups and their campaigns on social issues like women exploitation, HIV/AIDS, domestic violence etc. have led to reduction in the number of victims of domestic violence especially in the rural areas and the urban slums.

Self Help Groups: A step towards women education SHG is a very good idea and this encourages poor people to save small amounts and use money cautiously in emergencies like unexpected health problems, natural calamities etc. They deposit money into bank and they get interest for that money. Whenever they take loan they are charged

at a very low rate than interest given on deposit amount. They empower women in three different ways, namely: economically, socially and politically.

1) Economic empowerment: The status of the women is connected with their economic position, or status which depends on their participation in economic activities such as ability to access credit, role in decision making in financial matters etc.

The following variables have been used to assess the economic empowerment among the respondents as a result of microfinance.

• Increase in Income; • Increase in Savings; • Increase in Income generating activities; • Reduction of dependency on money lenders; • Reduction of poverty in the family; • Role in decision making related to Savings, Expenses and Children’s Education; • Ability to meet the financial crisis in the family.

2) Social empowerment: Social empowerment is a gradual process, a cumulative effort of economic and political empowerment but without social empowerment it is very difficult to achieve economic and political empowerment. Social interaction with outsiders and assertiveness to fight against injustice and problems are the indicators of social empowerment.

The following variables had been selected to assess the impact of social empowerment among the respondents.

• Moving to other places independently without the support of male members; • Expression of views in family as well as in groups; • Interaction with bankers/Govt. officers and non Governmental Organizations; • Assertiveness in participating protests against alcohol, abuse by male members of the family, environmental pollution, drinking water problem, and dowry related problems and abuse of women by their husbands; • Participation in rallies for Women’s day, Child labor abolition.

3) Political empowerment:

Participation of women in political process at the grass root level enhances their social status and it helps to solve the local problems, particularly drinking water, health, education, child development, social security for aged, disabled and in grass root level planning. Based on the above facts, the following variables were used to assess the empowerment of women.

• Participation in Gram Sabha meetings; • Voting independently; • Participation in election as contestants.

Apart from this awareness self help groups educate masses about various investment options available to them. The next section analyses the work of Humana People to People India of Alwar district in Rajasthan in the upliftment of Women.

Humana People to People India: Case study Humana People to People India started microfinance project in November 2007 by promoting women groups in Bansur block of Alwar district, Rajasthan. At present, the Microfinance project covers 172 villages in four blocks of Alwar district. The idea of the project is to provide improved access and efficient provision to micro credit/finance to secure sustainable livelihood opportunity and a life of dignity for the rural poor, especially women in India. The team ensures that the money received by the groups have been utilized for Livelihood purposes by robust loan utilization checks. Besides, the organization is also engaged in providing the clients non financial services such as financial literacy and orienting the women to take up occupation as per her skills and market demand.

Humana Microfinance disbursed Rs. 5.9 crore (1,180,000 US$) to 5,825 loan accounts during the reporting period and maintained a strong 99.36% recovery rate. The loan outstanding is Rs. 6.1 crore (1,120,000 US$) benefiting 7,914 women as on 19th June 2012.

Humana Microfinance together with a partner “Friends of Women World Banking in India” (FWWB) conducted financial literacy awareness campaign with all the existing borrowers.

Financial literacy fulfils Humana People to People India’s mandate to bring the rural poor women to the forefront of financial products and services. It allows our members to combine the financial products with the basic management skills to optimally utilize those products to enhance their income. Educating women on household financial management, social security products and achieved as close to 100% increase in measurable impact, e.g. bank accounts

opened, increase in usage of account for savings, sign-up on social security products like insurances of a minimum of 7500 poor households reached through this program.

Through this initiative, 15 trainers from HPPI were trained in Financial Literacy who further conducted mass awareness campaign (7500 stakeholders), household training (7500 target stakeholders) along with collecting data for baseline and impact assessment study.

According to the program, trainers implemented all activities in four branches by organizing mass awareness campaigns and house hold surveys for all existing members. 24 mass awareness campaigns were conducted each targeting 300 members in each campaign from their operational area, followed by the household campaigns in clusters of50 members each.

M-CRIL (recognized and specialized Rating Agency for Microfinance institutions) gave following rating to HPPI after a two-day intensive onsite and offsite observations. The Comparative ratings of the available data are as follows: Category Governance & strategic

December

November

2009

2010

Feb 2012

b

b

b+

b

b

b+

Financial performance

b+

b+

a-

Overall

b

b+

b+

positioning Organization & Management

M-CRIL certified that organizations like Humana have capability to promote women empowerment through education and mass awareness. It is not just the loan that rural women

need for financial stability but awareness about their rights and possible investment options that will help them in improving their situation in the society.

Conclusion The success stories of organizations like Humana and many other imply that self help groups have vast potential in improving the condition of rural women through education and awareness.

Self help Groups are usually focused on increasing the sources of credit to rural women but this can only help in economic empowerment of women as mentioned above. In order to provide social and political empowerment self help groups need to participate more actively in promoting education and awareness among rural women so that it helps them to live a better, respectful and independent life in the gender-based discriminating society.

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microfinance programs.

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Finance in Cameroon.

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