RGMVP’s success over the last few years has encouraged it to be more ambitious in its socio-economic change aspirations and to scale up its activities in the following target development areas:
- Poverty Alleviation: Poverty reduction
of 1 million + poor households
- Community Institutions: Nurturing 100,000+ SHGs with a social network of 5,000 + Village Organisations and 100+ Block Organisations of the poorest districts of UP
- Livelihood Enhancement: Ensuring that
every poor household takes up at least two
to three income generation activities and
earns a monthly income of at least Rs 3,000
- Health: Reduction of Infant Mortality
Rate (IMR) and Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR)
and improvement in mother and child
healthcare
- Education: Improvement in children’s
education and greater interest in higher
education
The implementation strategy to achieve these
targets is focussed on expanding RGMVP’s reach
into 100 blocks in 22 districts, with a special
focus on Central and Eastern Uttar Pradesh and
the Bundelkhand region. The 22 districts are
categorised into five areas of operation:
Sultanpur, Raebareli, Bundelkhand, Purvanchal
and Tarai. The social capital (Internal
Community Resource Persons) generated in the
older Sultanpur and Raebareli districts will be
used to build capacities and institutions in the
new areas. Support will be sought from National
Bank of Agricultural and Rural Development (NABARD)
in 56 new blocks; NABARD currently supports 44
blocks.RGMVP also envisages a substantial widening and deepening of its social change model and has identified the following development themes as part of its approach:
Self Help Institutions for Financial
Inclusion
To drive its TFI agenda further, RGMVP will launch women’s banks or Self Help Institutions for Financial Inclusion (SHIFIs). In areas that RGMVP has been working in for the last six or seven years, the programme has reached saturation – that is each and every needy, poor woman has been organised. SHIFIs are aimed at fulfilling these women’s aspiration to move forward further – to develop financial institutions that would give them absolutely hassle-free credit at their doorsteps and allow them to undertake activities that formal banking institutions do not allow. The corpus for these women’s banks would be created with contributions from SHGs, VOs and BOs. The bank would work in much the same way as a formal bank does, but with a special focus on its women members’ needs and requirements. The women themselves will manage the SHIFIs with facilitating support from the trustees.
The SHIFI’s corpus will be used by the
institutions of the poor to reach out to the
poorest of the poor, invest in livelihood
activities and to improve the health/education
status of the community.
The many advantages of women’s banks will be:
- Door-to-door banking
- Reduction of time and money spent on the
transactions
- Emergency funds
- Easy availability of documents like
application forms, photographs etc. at the
door step
- Financial and technical assistance
- People’s representation in the bank
- Profit that is generated by the women’s
bank will be ultimately divided into the
members based on their share.
Community Investment Fund (CIF)
Several collective interventions that are best taken up at the federation level (VO or BO levels). The CIF is a grant to each BO and would serve two major purposes in the development of the block: assist the BO to reach out to the poorest of the poor, who often get left out in the first phase of social mobilisation in villages; and finance projects such as group-based income-generating investment proposals relating to improved production and /or marketing of commodities, etc.
Innovation Fund
The poor fear to adopt innovation due to its
inherent risks. To encourage investment in institutions for the poor, the RGMVP innovation programme ensures two prerequisites: access to a steady stream of ideas, and a support system to encourage innovation, even if the idea fails. The Innovation Fund will institutionalise a “business plan” competition that funds and promotes the adoption of good ideas.
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