Are you willing to know the detailed information about Self-Help Groups? Here is our article which provides you the detailed information about the Self-Help Groups. They are small groups for poor people. The members of SHG face similar problems, they help each other to solve their problems and they promote small savings among their members, those savings are kept at the bank.
The major aims are to deliver financially products & Services to the section of Indian Population that lacks access to formal banking. This segment often from the lower income, meets its financial needs through informal sources such as moneylenders, traders, family, and friends, etc.
SHGs get linked to banks via NGOs, for opening a savings account and for their credit requirements. Banks lend to SHGs after assessing their creditworthiness on parameters such as group discipline, the regularity of meetings, savings, rotation of funds, maintenance of books of accounts, group record keeping, repayment of loans, etc.
It lays with the emphasis on activity clusters on the resources and the occupational skills of the people and the availability of markets.
Self-Help Group refers to self-governed, peer controlled, an informal group of people with the same socio-economic background and having a desire to collectively perform common purposes. Here poor people voluntarily come together to save whatever amount they can save conveniently out of their earnings, to mutually agree to contribute to a common fund and to lend to the members for meeting their productive and emergent needs.
SHGs have been able to mobilize small savings either on a weekly or monthly basis from persons who were not expected to have any savings. They have been able to effectively recycle the resources generated among the members for meeting the emergent credit needs of members of the group.
SHG is a group formed by the community women, which has a specific number of members like 15 or 20. In such a group the poorest women would come together for emergency, disaster, social reasons, economic support to each other have ease of conversation, social interaction and economic interaction.
An SHG is an informal association to enhance the member’s financial security as a primary focus and other common interest of members such as area development, awareness, motivation, leadership, training and associating in other social inter-mediation programs for the benefit of the entire community.
Objectives of SHG:-
- To implant the savings and banking habits among members.
- To secure them from financial, technical and moral strengths.
- To enable availing of loan for productive purposes.
- To gain economic prosperity through loan/credit.
- To gain from collective wisdom in organizing and managing their own finance and disturbing the benefits among themselves.
- To sensitize women of the target area for the need of SHG and its relevance in their empowerment.
- To create a group feeling among women.
- To enhance the confidence and capabilities of women.
- To develop collective decision making among women.
- To encourage the habit of saving among women and facilitate the accumulation of their own capital resource base.
- To motivate women taking up social responsibilities particularly related to women development.
- It acts as the forum for members to provide space and support to each other.
The SHGs broadly go through three stages of evolution such as:
- Group formation.
- Capital formation.
- Skill development and taking up of economic activity for income generation.
