Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, Apr 12: Dr Syed Sehrish Asgar, MD Jammu Kashmir Rural livelihood Mission (JKRLM) recieved the SKOCH Award for outstanding contribution towards the economic development of rural women under programme SAATH.
In recognition of the achievements by the J&K Rural Livelihood Mission, under the programme SAATH, the SKOCH foundation has conferred the prestigious SKOCH Award upon the JKRLM. Mission Director JKRLM, Dr Syed Sehrish Asgar conceptualised and implemented the idea of providing a platform for the Rural Women to enhance their livelihoods and add different verticals to the business possibilities for the rural SHG members.
This idea materialised into a full fledged program called ‘SAATH’ which was launched by Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha on 1st Sep 2021. SAATH is a rural entrepreneurship acceleration programme, helping rural women become self reliant.
JKRLM had initiated a comprehensive mentoring, under “SAATH programme” for selected SHG members, who have set-up enterprises under the SAATH Programme. Under the programme, SHG members are being exposed to various marketing processes which would enable them to transform their existing enterprises into higher order enterprises at a large scale.
SHG entrepreneurs are facilitated on value additions, marketing, branding, forward linkages, sales, business management in order to upscale their production and sales. After extensive interviewing and observations, out of 5000 SHG members, (100) SHG women entrepreneurs have been identified who are being supported in developing higher level enterprises.
The initiatives have played a pivotal role in poverty alleviation, by federating about 5 lakh rural women into over 60000 self help groups, out of which 1 lac rural women have been federated into SHGs during the Financial year 2021-22.
Another major initiative was to promote door to door digital banking and financial services in remote areas of the UT, for which JKRLM launched Mission ‘One Gram Panchayat-One DIGI-Pay Sakhi’ in the UT, the DIGI-Pay facility is being provided in 2000 remote villages of the UT and in the first phase, 125 women from Self Help Groups from across the Jammu and Kashmir Division have been selected as DIGI-Pay Sakhis equipped with AEPs devices .
Another major initiative was to make SHG products available on e-commerce platforms like Amazon, Flipkart and Meesho, thus helping the rural women connecting to global e-commerce platforms thus increasing the scale of their business.
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