Manavodaya are helping women lead sustainable change In rural India
Action | 09.12.13
There are 134.7 million people living in poverty in Uttar Pradesh.
Levels of literacy are low, with lower caste villagers either working as bonded labour or confined by a lack of investment to poor yield agricultural practices which offer inadequate income.
Women’s employment, education and health outcomes are significantly lower than those for men.
Manavodaya believe that people living in poverty are best placed to arrive at solutions to local problems themselves and this project is aimed at developing self-help groups, led primarily by women and girls, on a wider scale in Uttar Pradesh.
By providing an alternative to traditional economic development approaches, Manavodaya focuses on facilitation rather than management.
The distinction is critical: rather than arrive in a poor area with a set of externally determined objectives, development facilitators work to learn from the local residents and share the processes by which the residents can begin to address their own problems as a cohesive group.
The facilitator focuses on teaching collective decision-making, group processes, and local self-reliance.
This contrasts with the traditional development approach that usually focuses upon implementation of externally-determined projects and donations of financial resources.
Manavodaya UK has created a crowd funding project through Buzzbnk to generate the funds needed to support this initiative.
To read more information about the project and to give your support visit:
More information about Manavodaya in the UK and in India is available here.
