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Self Help Groups

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Village Organisations

Women's institutions : collective effort for a better future

We are committed to empowering women from marginalised communities, so that they can live their lives with dignity. 

Our Institution Building  model comprises of a three tier architecture with SHGs at the foundation, followed by Village Organisations and Federations. These institutions are the building blocks for our interventions around financial literacy, inclusion, livelihoods, governance, education, nutrition, health, governance etc

In an effort to scale up, we partnered with Camide, an NGO from West Africa, and successfully replicated the  Manjari Model in Mali and Senegal.  

Till date, our microfinance work has resulted the inclusion of more than 89,203 unbanked women in the financial system, who have been organised into 6277 SHGs, 741 Village Organization and 23 Federations. These institutions have disbursed a cumulative credit of INR 30 Crore. (4 Million USD).

Women have gained a sense of dignity and confidence and there has been a reduction in distress borrowing and pawning and an increased sense of agency and optimism about attaining future financial and well-being goals.  Women's participation in family decisions has also increased as a result. 

In an effort to scale up, we partnered with Camide, an NGO from West Africa, and successfully replicated the  Manjari Model in Mali and Senegal.  

Owned, governed and managed by women

Self-reliance is one of the core values of Manjari Foundation. Building strong and vibrant women's community owned and managed institutions that meet the diverse development needs of a village has always been at the core of all our efforts.

We encourage women to take greater responsibility and to be their own leaders; therefore, Self-Help Groups are the prime approach of social mobilisation at the grassroots.

We facilitate the formation of women's institutions that are owned, governed and managed by women members. SHGs are designed to function as self-sustainable institutions. As a result, our women's institutions serve as vibrant vehicles of change, that help identify challenges and play a pivotal role in designing, implementing and supervising our thematic interventions.

Programme pillars

Mobilisation

Mobilisation of women in Selp Help Groups and associated tiers

Capacity Building

Capacity building of members and institutions to foster a sense of agency

Access to Services

Facilitating linkages to access services that impact lives and livelihoods

Institution architecture

The institution platform is a three tier structure starting with SHGs at the grassroot level, that merge into Village Organisations and eventually come together to form Federations at the block-level. 

Federations

A federation is owned, governed and managed by women themselves. It’s a platform for collective voices, solidarity and self-expressions as well. Federations deal with issues of socio and economic developmen. They also provide technical services to VOs and SHGs to ensure their sustainability in the long run. The outreach of one Federation is generally 3000-5000 members.

Village Organisation

Village Organisations (VOs) are formed by SHGs coming together.They enable peer-to-peer learning and help address village level issues of such as livelihoods and other social, and political issues. VOs generally have an outreach of 10-15 SHGs (100-200 members).

Self Help Groups

Self Help Groups (SHGs) are the primary unit of community institution. They provide opportunities for mutual help, financial intermediation and addressi basic needs of members along with livelihood and social development.

Women's Institutions

Creating opportunity, access and control over resources and entitlements for women

Digital literacy

Digitised record keeping

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) provide new opportunities for developing economies in terms of increased efficiency and productivity, access to new services and occupations and increased connectivity.

However, the extent to which developing economies are able to reap these potential benefits is contingent on a host of social, economic and institutional dimensions.

While economic growth and rising productivity are the major expected outcomes of digitalisation, digital divides and related forms of exclusion and inequalities are commonly observed too.

Imbibing data-driven transparency

India, one of the largest economies in the world, with a remarkable pace of ICT diffusion, represents a relevant case to investigate the impacts of digitalisation on economic development.

Digitalisation of any programme is the need the hour. We have digitalised all our SHG programmes. We have developed a unique “Safal Saral Software” in-house, which is helping us to digitise all accounting and micro finance aspects pertaining to women institutions.

Linkages with financial institutions

The software offers several unique features and is helping members to access all the relevant information, which include financial data, socio-economic profiles of the members etc. The software will improve the interface between women members and financial institutions. A special feature of this software is its ability to work both online and offline which is useful to cater the needs of the members in remote geographies. We have offered the facility of a tablet and printer to our SHG Sakhis (Community Resource Persons), for easier access.

These devices are helping them to fill out data and relevant details at the village level in live meetings and send it to a sever for generating reports. This is a big leap towards digital literacy among rural women. The usage of tablets has brought flexibility, accessibility, accuracy, and transparency in the functioning of SHGs.

Impact stories

What people say

  • Nusrat Pathan
    We are happy to collaborate with Manjari Foundation under Social Initiative Parivartan. Parivartan and Manjari share a common goal of bringing about a comprehensive and sustainable development at the grassroots. The partnership has brought about a positive change through several thematic interventions including micro-enterprise development, capacity building, health, and education. As a result of this initiative, we have seen effective community engagement and empowerment and the resident of Dholpur district (Rajasthan) continue to get benefitted. We will continue to work on similar projects to improve the lives of the less privileged through our Holistic Rural Development Programme.
    Ms Nusrat Pathan, Head Corporate Social Responsibility, HDFC Bank
  • ‘Sakhi’ means a friend in Hindi, someone who stands by in trying times and during jubilations too. 26500+ women from across 2212 SHG’s and 6 Federation have come together to be the same for each other by making Micro Finance work for them. Sakhi is a platform of rural women which aims at economic well-being, reduction in poverty, self-dependence, and development of personal and social standing in the society through establishing Micro Finance and Micro Enterprises. Hindustan Zinc Limited together with its partners Saheli Sameti and Manjari Foundation are working towards unlocking their potential and empowering them to lead as Enablers.
    Mrs. Anupama Nidhi, CSR HEAD HZL
  • Manjari Foundation is IPE Global’s implementation partner in Dholpur, Rajasthan under the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), UK supported Project Udaan that aims at reducing teenage pregnancies. They have been instrumental in successfully piloting interventions for improving the knowledge of adolescents around sexual and reproductive health (SRH) in Bari block of Dholpur. Their efforts in organizing a team to take up the issue of adolescent SRH and facilitating its implementation with great sensitivity across the block has not only been recognized by the district administration, but has also paved way for attempting a scale-up across the district. Their coordination with the community-level institutions, local government bodies and the target group has been noteworthy and exemplary.
    Mr. Ashish Banerjee, IPE Global
  • Without larger vision and dedication of the team of MF and its leadership, both vertical and horizontal growth would have never been possible to pick up at this level in this short history of its evolution. Since I have been associated with the Sakhi project of MF funded by Hindustan Zinc for the last 2 years, the happiness and confidence seen in their faces of hundreds of women in the villages proves its vitality. I have also witnessed the UN-women funded second chance education project (SCE) being implemented in 3 districts under the guidance of PRADAN is a much worthy to reach out to those young women in the age group of 16-35 who have been deprived in their childhood with the education, skills and employment are now happily enrolled and trained to overcome these deprivations with much positive outcome. While writing all these statements, I recall each visit to the project area to witness the change processes that were taking place within those women who had never dreamed of being so empowered and self-reliant so soon in their lifetimes.
    Binod Raj Dahal, Integrator- PRADAN
  • Our collaboration with Manjari has allowed us to better understand the approach of solidarity groups and concretely towards the empowerment of women in the commune of Logo.The participation of Indian PRCs has been beneficial because the women have appropriated easily by seeing that they are rural women Indian women who share their experiences with them. The Camide team was formed by the professionals of Manjari with enthusiasm and professionalism and is able to reproduce most of the activities. This period of collaboration opens up prospects for our two structures to replicate the model in Mali and Africa. We again thank Manjari for all the efforts made for Camide and particularly the Director Sanjay Kumar. We were able to reach more than 2,500 women and more than 180 million CFA francs of credit granted four test henhouses substantial support for the winter and market gardening campaign in terms of results thank you.
    Mr. Aou Keita, Director Camide, Kayes, Mali, West Africa
  • Development of Corporate Citizenship (DoCC), the social internship program of SPJIMR has been collaborating with Manjari Foundation since 2015. This has been fruitful relationship for us. I want to emphasise the four following themes. First the internships give our students a different idea of leadership which also gives them a sense of requirements for the future and adds to the ethics of sociological content. The participants acquire a notion of innovation- both social and technical which gives them a systemic view of the society. Such an empirical location gives them both a sense of limits and possibilities of what they can do. Environmental consciousness and gender sensitivity constitute two critical parts of social responsibility as we define it today. The participants of the internship understand what these key concepts mean in everyday sense. Internship at Manjari adds to their imagination in this direction. We value this relationship.
    Dr. Chandrika Parmar, S.P. Jain Institute of Management & Research

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