About Self-Help Group (SHG) of IndiaMay 17, 2019
SHG is a holistic programme of micro-enterprises covering all aspects of self-employment, organization of the rural poor into self Help groups and their capacity building, planning of activity clusters, infrastructure build up, technology, credit and marketing.
It lays emphasis on activity clusters based on the resources and the occupational skills of the people and availability of markets.
Self-Help Group refers to self-governed, peer controlled, an informal group of people with same socio-economic background and having a desire to collectively perform common purposes. Here poor people voluntarily come together to save whatever amount they can save conveniently out of their earnings, to mutually agree to contribute to a common fund and to lend to the members for meeting their productive and emergent needs.
SHGs have been able to mobilize small savings either on a weekly or monthly basis from persons who were not expected to have any savings. They have been able to effectively recycle the resources generated among the members for meeting the emergent credit needs of members of the group.
SHG is a group formed by the community women, which has a specific number of members like 15 or 20. In such a group the poorest women would come together for emergency, disaster, social reasons, economic support to each other have ease of conversation, social interaction and economic interaction.
Objectives of SHG:
1. To inculcate the savings and banking habits among members.
2. To secure them from financial, technical and moral strengths.
3. To enable availing of loan for productive purposes.
4. To gain economic prosperity through loan/credit.
5. To gain from collective wisdom in organising and managing their own finance and distributing the benefits among themselves.
6. To sensitize women of the target area for the need of SHG and its relevance in their empowerment.
7. To create a group feeling among women.
8. To enhance the confidence and capabilities of women.
9. To develop collective decision making among women.
10. To encourage the habit of saving among women and facilitate the accumulation of their own capital resource base.
11. To motivate women taking up social responsibilities particularly related to women development.
12. It acts as the forum for members to provide space and support to each other.
SHGs are considered as one of the most significant tools to adopt participatory approach for the economic empowerment of women, SHG is a group of people that meets regularly to discuss issues of interest to them and to look at solutions of commonly experienced problems. The group may or may not be promoted by Government or non-Government institutions.
The SHG is a group of rural poor who have volunteered to organise themselves into a group for the eradication of poverty of the members.
They agree to save regularly and convert their savings into a common fund known as Group Corpus. The members of the group agree to use this common fund and such other funds that they may receive as a group through common management.
The SHGs broadly go through three stages of evolution such as:
I. Group formation.
II. Capital formation and through the revolving fund.
iii. Skill development and taking up of economic activity for income generation.