Poorna Shakti Kendras to empower rural women

• To ensure the socio-economic development of women in rural areas, the National Mission for Empowerment of Women is promoting a model intervention project. The project is launched across 21 districts nationwide.
• The women’s centre- Poorna Shakti Kendra, established in villages would offer services to women at the grassroots. The motto of the Kendra is “hum sunenge nari ki baat” (we will listen to women’s voices), where two women coordinators or Gram Samanvayaks in each Kendra will help women get pensions and voter identity and Aadhaar cards.
• One of the important elements of the project is the stress on processes instrumental in bringing about women’s empowerment through convergence strategies on the ground.
• Similarly, to encourage universal social mobilisation through self-help groups under the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM), attention is being paid to women’s empowerment. The NRLM proposes to ensure universal financial inclusion by facilitating opening of savings accounts by all SHGs, while encouraging their thrift and credit activities and other financial services. Under the NRLM, there shall be one rural self-employment training institute in each district. Each will train at least 750 candidates of the below poverty level (BPL) category.

More about National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM):

• Aajeevika – National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM) was launched by the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD), Government of India in June 2011. Aided in part through investment support by the World Bank, the Mission aims at creating efficient and effective institutional platforms of the rural poor enabling them to increase household income through sustainable livelihood enhancements and improved access to financial services.
• NRLM implementation is in a Mission Mode. This enables

(a) shift from the present allocation based strategy to a demand driven strategy enabling the states to formulate their own livelihoods-based poverty reduction action plans,

(b) focus on targets, outcomes and time bound delivery,

(c) continuous capacity building, imparting requisite skills and creating linkages with livelihoods opportunities for the poor, including those emerging in the organized sector, and

(d) monitoring against targets of poverty outcomes. As NRLM follows a demand driven strategy, the States have the flexibility to develop their livelihoods-based perspective plans and annual action plans for poverty reduction. The overall plans would be within the allocation for the state based on inter-se poverty ratios.

NRLM Mission

• “To reduce poverty by enabling the poor households to access gainful self-employment and skilled wage employment opportunities, resulting in appreciable improvement in their livelihoods on a sustainable basis, through building strong grassroots institutions of the poor.”