Community Forestry International Projects
Fri, Oct 19 2007

The Formation of Women’s Self-Help Groups

Partner Organizations in India:

  • Inter-Tribal Development Agency
  • Integrated Tribal Development Agency
  • Andhra Pradesh Forest Department
This project was implemented with support from the International Fund for Agricultural Development based in Rome, Italy. As part of its on-going project, IFAD has been supporting the expansion of female-dominated self-help groups (SHGs). In Adilabad, a predominantly tribal district in northern Andhra Pradesh, over 13,000 groups have been formed. Usually comprising 10 to 12 women, the SHGs in the district currently involve some 150,000 women who have been able to save Rs 200 million. This constitutes roughly Rs 1,282 per participating household, or about 10% of average income in the district. Throughout Andhra Pradesh, 5 million women belong to 400,000 thrift groups and have saved about US$ 240 million. The women have been able to use this revolving fund to finance agriculture, education, health, and other household needs on the lines of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. Starting with meager savings, women have learned how to keep accounts, develop their entrepreneurial abilities, and plan for the financial security of their families. This has led to an increase in family expenditures on education and health. Financial and social-capital capacity building offers tribals and other low-income communities with new opportunities for development and investment, especially if they are able to leverage their savings with local finance institutions.

The question is for this project was: ”What would happen to the SHGs after project support terminated in March 2003?” CFI designed this project as a transition to build the capacity of the rural poor and their organizations to sustain livelihood generating activities by developing a federation of SHGs to support women's groups in the Asifabad range of Adilabad district. Over the long term, the creation of a federation can serve four goals: (i) institutional development of SHGs to enable them to receive, manage, and use public funds; (ii) financial management to handle the funds, and leverage these funds with local financial institutions to ensure more equity for poor women and other marginalized groups; (iii) developing investment strategies to shift the self-help groups' main focus from savings mobilization to providing services, including environmental services, such as trading in carbon emission and preserving biodiversity; and (iv) meeting the equity and sustainability concerns of development to ensure that women are empowered, marginalized groups are represented, and the federation of community is sustained beyond the life of development projects.

Click on the following icons to download a copy of the report or video documentary.

Empowering the Poor: Community-based Environmental and Financial Management in Adilabad District, India

We Have a Dream: How Women’s Self-Help Groups are Changing the Face of Rural India

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