WHY WOMEN EMPOWERMENT?
- Gender-discrimination curbs women from achieving their best and stands in the way of living a life free of domination and fear.
- Stimulate the confidence in women by providing them opportunities to see the skills that they contain and are dormant within them. Better education and awareness enables them to take advantage of income-earning opportunities and support their families.
- Sampark believes that women who are underprivileged can improve their living conditions only when they realise their potential and become self-reliant.
WHAT SAMPARK DOES TO EMPOWER WOMEN
Sampark works towards enhancing the voice of women, with the philosophy that all women, men and children have the basic human rights to dignity and self-determination, and that all people should have the opportunity and choice to enhance their own potential and well-being.
- Work with 7,000 low-income women, devadasis (deprived of human rights) in Koppal, Karnataka through the Self-Help Group (SHG) model. The SHGs are federated into 3 Self Reliant Cooperatives, registered with the government of Karnataka
- Work with 1000 low incomes, scheduled caste rural women (socio-economically disadvantaged) in Chiraigaon Block, near Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh in creating sustainable livelihoods.
Interventions
Koppal
Self reliant credit cooperatives of rural women manage the day to day functioning as well as governance activities on their own, with capacity building support from Sampark. They have nearly 7,000 members across 60 villages who deposit savings and avail credit for income generating activities. The cooperatives have the capacity to liaise with local governance structures to avail support. The other women are in completely independent SHGs that are able to link to government programmes and avail credit and other forms of support.
Varanasi
The women are trained to run their own Self Help groups, and manage their accounts. They are encouraged to be more confident, mobile , and attend training on a variety of topics such as health and hygiene, leadership and gender.
Nepal Sampark builds the capacities of a union and a cooperative of entertainment workers of 4,000 members, in the area of enterprise training and financial inclusion. It works through a training of Trainers model and builds local capacities. This strengthens the union to offer valuable services to its members and therefore increases its own membership and sustainability.
The knowledge and research activities are undertaken by the Sampark Livelihoods Promotion Trust (SLPT) which is a separate organization with research in development goals.
A Rapid Assessment of the Devadasi Practice in India