Having an objective to serve the society, I visited the SKS NGO yesterday and got to know their initiatives to change the lives of under privileged. It was very informative and I thought to create a bubble in this space based on my experience and learnings.
With a population of over 1 billion, 35% of whom fall below the poverty line, India has one of the largest populations of poor in the world.Programs such as Micro-finance is doing good to improve the lives of the poor and helping them to connect the main stream.However it has not been able to reach the bottom 5% of the poor i.e. extreme poor.These poor lives are characterized by chronic hunger,persistent poor health, and illiteracy.
I was wondering how we can take steps to improve this poor segment as they lack the ability and confidence to join mainstream and a complete lack of sustainable approach to change their lives.
After interaction with the NGO people, I was excited that there is a plan to target such people and help them to connect the mainstream. Kudos to program.
The program educate people for certain number of months towards mainstream development programs, after the program many members become capable to join micro-finance organizations to sustain existing business or diversify income by starting a new business.
There are basically 4 steps to improve the lives of extreme poor in this program.
- Selection and transfer of livelihood assets and training in asset management such as running a general store.
- Improving the health of these extreme poor by health development programs.
- By Social development i.e. provides members with the opportunity to conduct group meetings and discuss important social concerns in an open forum.
- By financial literacy i.e. provides members with basic financial literacy through guidance on maintaining cash-flow, budgets, setting up goals and savings.
I want to thank at the end to SKS NGO for proving me such valuable information and helped me to understand the core issues of the country and how to tackle and improve the conditions of the poor. I am very sure that these kind of programs add social muscle to their lives and they are no longer living in the margins of the society but are instead building strong social pillars within their communities.
