Just days after Kudumbasree signed a memorandum of understanding for expanding its poverty eradication and women empowerment activities to more panchayats in Assam in the country’s northeast, more recognition has come its way.
The Kudumbasree National Resource Organisation (NRO) has won a national award of the Union Ministry of Rural Development for implementing poverty eradication projects in various States as part of the National Rural Livelihood Mission.
Set up by the State government in 1998 to remove poverty through community participation under the leadership of local self-government institutions, Kudumbasree has today expanded its footprint to 12 States and the Union Territory of Lakshadweep, winning many plaudits along the way.
From a small start as community development society experiments in Malappuram and Alappuzha, it has over the years become a tool for grassroots planning and development. Designed around the components of credit, entrepreneurship, and empowerment, it has helped provide a source of income for countless women from less privileged sections, thus giving them a voice, dignity, and secure future.
The Kudumbasree NRO brings together Panchayati Raj institutions and social organisations to implement development activities, the primary ones being formation of neighbourhood groups and framing of livelihood projects.
Implementation of such schemes in rural areas in various States envisages providing skill training to women to enable them to start their own ventures and improve their financial situation.
It is the CDS chairpersons who go to other States and act as mentors for starting self-help groups and deciding what microfinance-related activities should be taken up, and what social interventions should be made.
They also help create awareness of various government schemes such as MGNREGS, ICDS, and National Social Assistance Programme so that the women’s network is not only aware of these but also that they are entitled to them and can demand them.
Maximum participation in grama sabhas is encouraged, and they are given training prior to it for effective results. The SHGs are also encouraged to formulate their own plans and integrate them with the Grama Panchayat Development Plans.
Besides hand-holding such activities, the mentors create a local resource pool and train them so that they are equipped to carry forward various activities whenever the mentors withdraw.
It was in 2012 that the National Rural Livelihood Mission recognised Kudumbasree as a national resource organisation. Activities were first taken up in Bihar, and in 2013, it started working in Thiruvananthapuram.
