Livelihood development programs are designed and implemented by the organization in order to help improve the quality of life for marginalized people by providing them with;
Sahrudaya gives importance to the promotion of livelihood through the productive use of the microfinance services arranged by the organization to the members of the Self Help Groups. As with all of our programs, poverty reduction and creating better income are concerns of the organization in order to make the lives of the poor more improved. The livelihood programs seek to get at the root causes of poverty and inequality. Economic sustainability is an important factor in the development of a family. The rate of poverty in households can be reduced through proper Livelihood development imparting skill training and encouraging poor people to start viable economic activities is one of the key strategies of the Organization.
Training to the identified families, implementation of a set of activities like selection of viable economic activity, setting up of the micro enterprise with minimum resources, linkage with marketing networks etc are monitored by the organization through the Livelihood Development Department. Financial services including soft loans and capacity building in livelihood activities are reached to members in the grassroots network through WESCO Credit, the financial intermediary division of WSE, . The soft loans are repayable by the loanees within two years period.
During the 2019-2020, we are happy to note that many families have come out their poverty cycle through the livelihood development programs of the organization. The productive utilization of the financial support through WESCO Credit has been a true factor for this change. They are earning a good income through these micro enterprises. The locally developed and produced products have now good demand and Sahrudaya helps these units for the marketing of their products through its Sahrudaya Family Marts. A marketing division has been put into services for coordinating and supporting these units in the villages and also to encourage new families to venture into new income generating activities.
With the support of Usha Social Services which is an NGO under Usha International Limited, we are implementing a project for empowering rural women in gainful employment activities. As part of this, 30 Women were trained in stitching activities and in running village schools in tailoring in their villages. All these women were provided with Tailoring machines and certificates from Usha Social Services. 10 women are trained from Alleppey District and 20 women were trained from Ernakulam district. All these women have started their own tailoring units in their respective villages and are also running village schools as per the guidelines of Usha. Now they are making very good income through stitching work and by imparting training to other interested women in the villages. This was very innovative program and all the women under the program are able to make good family income from the activities of the project.
