Today, over 2,90,500 women from some of the most deprived areas of Uttar Pradesh can proudly claim to have engineered a socio-economic revolution that has impacted the lives of thousands of rural poor. These agents of change are members of Community Institutions of the Poor (Self Help Groups and their federations), driven and managed by the poor themselves which have helped disadvantaged communities unleash their potential for progress. The catalyst in this powerful transformation has been the Rajiv Gandhi Mahila Vikas Pariyojna (RGMVP), the Rajiv Gandhi Charitable Trust’s flagship programme for rural development. Since 2002, when it was initiated, RGMVP has worked relentlessly to build a scalable institutional framework that continues to give a voice and freedom from social and economic oppression to a growing number of poor while serving as a conduit for them to gain access to a wide range of development initiatives.
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I am responsible for all the women in my
block – how to run the Village and Block Organisations.
All five of us – the Block Organisation office bearers –
listen to the reports from the Village Organisations
carefully. If some work is not being done, we go into
the Block and make sure it is done. I have learnt so
much. Today, from a well, I have moved into a pond – the
bigger world. 
