Women Empowerment & Livelihood Program

Panna, Harda & Dewas

Samavesh focuses on marginalised sections of the community, especially women, youth and children. The goal of the program is to create an enabling environment for the community to understand and adopt sustainable and diverse livelihood practices including natural farming and allied agricultural practices such as back-yard poultry, Goat rearing, Multi-layer farming model and micro orchards etc. To achieve this goal Samavesh is actively involved with setting up Self Help Groups (SHGs) of women for micro-credit purposes. The SHGs are also active in the social sphere too. They serve as the backbone for mobilizing members of the village level Women's Forums (Sakhi Manch), which takes up village level issues and activates the gram-sabha meetings.

Village level SHGs have been brought together to form Sakhi Manch. At the level of women SHGs, members have accessed banks for livelihood and other needs. Women get financial independence through savings & loans from SHGs & develop Sakhi Manch to create effective representation on platforms such as Gram Sabha and Panchayat, SMCs and raise voices to solve their issues. Once aware of their strengths this group is able to approach and participate in Panchayat and Gram Sabha meetings to access benefits from various government schemes. In addition, the presence of the Sakhi Manch also helps to provide inputs for other village platforms such as the School, SMC, Anganwadi, PDS etc.

We have worked at different levels on community mobilisation with the objective of raising awareness and empowerment of members. There are two main focus areas of our rural community work:

Our Two Focus Areas

A. Empowering Rural Families through Natural Farming & Local Governance →

B. Securing Nutrition through Kitchen Gardens & Community Action →