Sambhali Trust Empowering Women and Girls in India

In January 2014, a new group started (Group 9) with 12 new women. We explained to the women how the groups work and the rules, opening a bank account and starting to deposit monthly savings. Another 11 women were also keen to join in this project and so we established Group 10 in May 2014 and they also have recently opened a bank account. They are all keen to take loans through Sambhali, because the interest is low, (Per 100 rupees there is 1 rupee decreasing interest).

There are now 112 women in 10 Groups within this Project.

The women have attended the monthly meetings, taken by Manju Mehta, Sambhali Trust’s Project Co-ordinator, although some months the women have needed to attend to the crops in their fields, but the women in all the groups have attended regularly except unfortunately Solyankiyatala, who found it difficult to attend and who haven’t appeared to be committed enough despite repeated encouragement from Mrs Mehta. The Founder/Director of Sambhali Trust, Mr. Govind Singh Rathore, also travels regularly to Setrawa and has a discussion with the women and explains how Sambhali can help them.

Apart from Solyankiyatala, 99% of the women have been increasingly active and confident in wanting to take out loans to purchase goats, cows, flour grinding machines and start small shops and even to buy equipment to help with the construction of their house.  The groups have been very successful in paying their loans and the table below shows how many loans have been given out to all the groups in 2013-14.

Where some members have been unable to get loans, or cannot afford to take out a loan, with the help of Global Giving some donations have also been provided in the form of goats and cows which have been given to selected members of the groups which has also helped some members to pay their electricity bills where they have been unable to do so.  Those members who receive these donations are suggested by the members of each group, who agree that those women are in particularly difficult circumstances and need direct help.

The women are very happy, motivated and empowered by their increased ability to be able to help themselves by starting these small businesses and also many of their children are either attending Sambhali’s Empowerment Centre in Setrawa or are being sponsored through Sambhali to go to school. There are also now 20 children from Setrawa going to school in Jodhpur as part of the Sheerni Educational Programme which has considerably improved the educational standard of these girls as well as providing an optimistic future. The ongoing success and establishment of Sambhali’s Empowerment Centre in Setrawa has helped to be the central core around which many activities are provided by the staff and volunteers that also encompass the these women and their families. A second empowerment centre also opened in June 2014 approx. 5 km from Setrawa in an outlying hamlet which provides literacy and sewing classes to poor uneducated women and children of this rural desert area.  We have a local tutor, Pooja Kanwar who has been trained internally through Sambhali by shadowing our Hindi and Sewing tutors in the Jodhpur Empowerment Centre.

Volunteers within the Setrawa Empowerment Centre, have provided outreach programmes to the families, teaching them about the water cycle and hygiene, whilst we have also had a many groups of volunteers and interns taking a keen interest in the lives of the women in this rural desert area; one group from the U.S who were studying health and nutrition at university spent 10 days looking at the health and nutrition of these women and teaching them the value of nutritious foods, which local foods have various nutrient components in them; as well as purifying water.

• Table of Sheerni Project Loans (DOCX)