Self- Help Groups & Vipula Women’s Credit Cooperative Society
PRIDE programmes ensure that women in our communities not only become socially responsible but economically independent and participate in family and community decision making process. Since the financial services of the formal banking system have traditionally remained inaccessible to a majority of the poorer sections of the rural population, especially women, an initiative was made by PRIDE INDIA to initiate a women’s cooperative on the principle of mutual help. This was the Vipula Women’s Credit Co-operative Society.
However, its success was limited as it could only cater to selected pockets in the neighbourhood. Hence, to meet the credit needs of rural women from the other operational areas, PRIDE initiated the creation of Self-Help Groups.
The following are the core principles that apply to all PRIDE.’s micro-finance programmes
- Serve the poorest clients, with a focus on women
- Promote solidarity and group guarantees
- Savings Mobilization
- Support capacity building/training
- Increase productive assets
- Ensure a child-focused perspective
- Promote culturally appropriate programme approaches
- Plan for sustainability
As of today, PRIDE has 230 SHG’s, and the Vipula Credit Co-operative has a total of 2847 members.
PRIDE has also been running an integrated development programme for adolescent girls to impart non-formal education and vocational training to them. One of the major objectives of the programme is to familiarize adolescent girls with knowledge about diverse but interrelated areas such as governance, public services, sanitation, child care etc. that will make them confident and enable them to become economically and socially independent in life.
