Akshaya Self-Help Groups, Savings & Credit
Since 1996 HiLDA has been very active in forming women’s Self-Help Groups (neighborhood groups) called Akshaya, which in Malayalam (State Language) means ‘everlasting’. These groups have been formed in relatively remote parts of Wayanad where:
- Families lack the basic needs such as land, shelter, food, water and electricity.
- Women are excluded from the decision-making process
- Scheduled castes and scheduled tribes are forced to exist in poverty
- Access to health education is limited or non-existent
- People’s livelihoods and survival are vulnerable to water shortage and soil erosion
- Unemployment and lack of income are serious problems.
Weekly savings, weekly meetings, internal loans to members, organizing bank loans with prompt repayment, initiating community business activities, participating in the local authority functions etc is their main remit. The outcomes in short is detailed below:
- 1300 Self Help Groups (SHG) with minimum 10 members each covering 15000 family
- Promotion of savings among tribal and rural women
- Reducing dependency on moneylenders
- Soft loan to members from savings
- Improvement in standard of living
- Enhancing the women's bargaining power
- Capacity building and Leadership development
- Federating the SHGs and building up a women's movement.
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