Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, July 28: Vodafone India has entered into a tie-up with J&K’s State Rural Livelihood Mission (SRLM) – UMEED, to empower women in Self Help Group (SHG).
The partnership, started as a pilot project in Ghagwal village in Bhadarwah, facilitating instant deposits to SHG’s saving account using the mobile wallet – M-Pesa.
Currently, J&K SRLM-UMEED is focusing on reducing poverty by enabling women from 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.
Under J&K SRLM-UMEED, there are multiple Village Organizations with which many Self Help Groups are associated. To streamline the process of depositing money in the SHG bank account, where SHG leader and book keeper has to travel a few kilometers for depositing cash, Vodafone M-Pesa has partnered with J&K SRLM-UMEED by offering its services to SHG.
Introducing it as a pilot project, Vodafone has added the group leaders and book keepers of 154 SHGs from Ghagwal village as M-Pesa customers. Going a step further, Vodafone has appointed the local M-Pesa dealer from amongst the SHGs within the Village Organization, giving one more line of business to earn livelihood.
This partnership between Vodafone M-Pesa and UMEED has many advantages for the SHGs. It allows instant transfer of money to the SHG bank account, down to a few minutes from a day-long exercise. It helps save time and cost of travelling to bank since the M-Pesa dealer is located nearby. This has also reduced the risk involved in physically carrying the money over longer distance for depositing, thus allowing the group leader and book keeper to sleep peacefully. Another advantage of this tie-up is that with the deposits made on time, the credit rating of SHGs goes up which increases their chances of procuring loans from SRLM or the banks.
Speaking about the association, Suresh Sethi, Business Head – M-Pesa, Vodafone India said, “We are hoping to extend the benefit of using M-Pesa (Mobile Wallets) and further enhance the capabilities of the VO/SHGs.”
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