RGMVP’s Livelihood Enhancement initiative is
built on the Micro Credit Planning (MCP) process
through which each rural household can plan its
finances through a participatory method based on
the following principles:
- Income must increase
- Expenditure should decrease
- Employment must increase
- Risks should decrease
An important aspect of MCP is to ensure that
every household has two or three sources of
income to build financial and social security of
the poor. The Livelihood Enhancement initiative |
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facilitates and supports the poor’s acquisition
of one or more sources of livelihoods through a
comprehensive and holistic approach through the
following:
Dairy
One of the focal aspects of the Livelihood
Enhancement Programme is the fostering and promotion
of dairy activity amongst the SHG women on a large
scale. Dairy is an activity that most rural
households are already familiar with. RGMVP’s
endeavour is to use this basic experience of dairy
and to build upon it by teaching SHG women the best practices of dairy, and motivating them to increase
the milk yields of their cattle through these best
practices. While RGMVP provides extension services
by creating an enabling environment for the poor to
adopt dairy as an income generating activity, it has
formed partnerships with the National Dairy
Development Board (NDDB) to provide the marketing
infrastructure for the milk produced through SHG
dairy activity and with BAIF Development Research
Foundation to provide expertise on areas such as
artificial insemination to increase the milk yield
of the cattle. In fact, RGMVP is facilitating
backward and forward linkages with NDDB to make
dairy one of the important verticals of development
for the poor. NDDB’s 95 bulk milk coolers spread
across the project area buy milk from 20,000 dairy
families (over 1,00,000 poor), thus providing them
with a viable means of alternative livelihood
through average earning of Rs 2,000 per family per
month. The future potential for dairy activity is
projected at 500,000 households.In addition, RGMVP provides intensive training to proactive SHG women, known as Dairy CRPs, who in turn disseminate these learnings to every SHG, VO and BO. Training on sustainable dairy practices is also provided at the Training Centre for Sustainable Agriculture and Dairy, set up in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin, where experts from the University impart training to Dairy CRPs.
Livestock Management
This aspect of the Livelihood Enhancement initiative is focused on facilitating supplementary livelihoods such as goatry, bee-keeping and poultry. Access to sources for these activities and training in best practices is facilitated by RGMVP.
Non-Farm Sector
RGMVP also encourages poor women and girls to
explore opportunities in the non-farm sector by
providing training in such income-generating
activities such as stitching and embroidery, food
preservation, cane furniture making, mechanised
knitting, leather work, pottery making, detergent
making, etc. |
