Help Rural Indian Women Save for Education

Bill Brower is a Field Program Officer with GlobalGiving who visited our partners’ projects throughout South and Southeast Asia. On June 19th he visited a financial literacy training in a mobile classroom. His “Postcard” from the visit:

A few years ago, Mann Deshi started requiring financial literacy courses for women wanting to take out a small loan to improve the success rate of the initiatives the women undertook with the money. Since men would often be involved in the decisions of what to do with the money, Mann Deshi then began requiring that the husbands also complete the course. At the request of women in targeted rural areas (who would find it difficult if not prohibitive to make the trainings if they were held in the town of Mhaswad), Mann Deshi outfitted a bus to be a fully functional mobile classroom in order to bring the course to the beneficiary communities.

The bus was comfortably seating ten when I saw it. I could see how one might forget they weren’t in an actual classroom during the course of the day. There were even sewing machines in the back for other vocational training courses.

I visited the home of a couple of women who have received loans from Mann Deshi. Sujata Mane used her first loan to buy a buffalo. With her second she bought a noodle maker. She used the profits of selling the noodles in Bombay to repay the loan and then secured a third loan to purchase a spice mixer. Sujata, along with her mother-in-law, makes biryani and chili mixes (she has arguably the best smelling house in India) which she sells to local restaurants and family members take to sell in Pune. Word must be spreading because she also had two walk-up customers while I was there. Quite the entrepreneur, Sujata wants to expand her operations and bring on some day laborers to help. I asked the woman at the other home I visited if her family’s life was better since receiving loans from Mann Deshi. She said they were because she’s been able to pay for the education of her children and nieces and nephews.

All of this is win-win corporate social responsibility for the Foundation’s associated co-op bank: The bank gets a greater number of more effective customers and the customers are more capable of using the services provided by the bank to improve their economic situation.

What do you think about this project? Hit “comment or rate report” to give your feedback. Thanks for supporting Mann Deshi!

Links:

• Watch the course in action

Dear Mann Deshi Friends and Supporters,

Thank you very much for you regular support to “Help Rural Women Save For Education”.

Mann Deshi’s mission to provide rural women with necessary access to finance and support economic achievement. Financial education training helps daily wage laborers women to become successful business women. I am thankful to donors for helping our women to successful business women through financial education program.

Mann Deshi is offering financial literacy class in each branch. We are conducting financial literacy course at nine locations in Maharashtra and Karnataka. Since started this course in December 2006 we have reached to 11464 women.

Minting Business Successfully: Aruna Tanaji Gaikwad worked as a wage laborer in other people’s fields, earning a meager 20 rupees ($0.54) per day. She always dreamed of running her own business, and she knew she would be successful. However, she was constrained by her lack of capital.

“If you have capital for doing business then you can start. When I got a loan from Mann Deshi it was the first time I ever saw 10,000 rupees ($222,) and I never spent a single rupee unproductively. People like me who don’t have any fixed assets would never get respect or loans from a big bank and would require papers and guarantors. Two other banks rejected my loan application, and I never thought that in my life I would be able to get a loan this big.” Aruna has now become one of the most successful wholesale and retail vegetable vendors in the district. She initially earned 50 rupees ($1.35) per day but has since increased her earnings to almost 400 rupees ($10.81) daily. Aruna has developed a system whereby she calls the wholesale agents in three different neighboring cities to inquire about the prices and then goes to buy from whoever has the lowest prices. Because of her relentless conscientiousness, she has become the local authority on fruit and vegetable prices, and has built a loyal following of vendors who buy exclusively from her.

After buying the vegetables, she travels to a different village market each day of the week to sell her produce. During the day, she leaves her own plot in the market every hour to briefly walk around and assess the prices, demand, and stock of the market. She then advises the other vendors who purchased from her on how to set their prices accordingly. Aruna’s business is complex, particularly because she is intimately acquainted with the patterns of all 6 village markets where she works, as well as the broader supply and demand chains of fruits and vegetables throughout the district.

“I knew I had the brain to do business, but before I didn’t have the capital. This bank gave me capital and Business School by financial literacy gave me training how to do marketing, how to manage money, how to make planning for future, how to do budgeting. This is the first time I saw that with money I could realize my dream and actually develop a business.”

Financial Literacy is a high impact compulsory program for all borrowers of the bank. It impacts the largest number of women providing basic understanding of money and the discipline of savings. Mann Deshi did impact assessment of financial literacy course separately in August 2009. Impact assessment was done by SAIS students and found a very good end result. The Financial Literacy program, implemented only three years ago, is already clearly having a positive impact for the Bank and its clients. Clients who have taken the course are saving more in more secure places; they are taking out bigger and more loans more frequently and for more productive purposes; and they are repaying more regularly and defaulting on loans less.

We greatly appreciate all the support you have given us so far and hope that you will be able to help us in for our future projects.

Thank you! Vanita Shinde CAO of Mann Deshi

Links:

• Satara B-School that ranks with harvard
• A rural B-school for women

Dear Mann Deshi Friends and Supporters,

Thank you very much for you regular support to “Help Rural Women Save For Education”.

Shahin Mulla, Self Help Group leader of Vaduj Branch says, “After owning the property and understanding the importance of property papers in the functional literacy class it helped me to understand and closely monitor my property papers so that bureaucrats in Revenue Department cannot manipulate and change the name in the property papers.” She further added “If I know how to read my property papers my husband will not mortgage without my knowledge. This will help my family not to become bankrupts.” Courses like financial literacy help women to intervening in the market and do the business successfully.

Mann Deshi’s mission to provide rural women with necessary access to finance and support economic achievement. Financial education training helps daily wage laborers women to become successful business women. I am thankful to donors for helping our women to successful business women through financial education program. We greatly appreciate all the support you have given us so far and hope that you will be able to help us in for our future projects.

Affectionately, Chetna