WOMEN CENTRIC VILLAGE

Introduction

Atmashakti Trust is a rights-based organization registered in 1995, with a broad objective of creating awareness of constitutional rights and entitlements amongst the most marginalized rural communities with an emphasis on Tribal and Dalits. More importantly, it serves as a catalyst to promote community mobilization, leading to a sustained struggle to ensure that awareness gets translated into material benefits. It also works on enabling policymaking and policy change at the state/national level based on felt needs.

In a span of 5 to 10 years, Atmashakti Trust is planning to expand its operational areas to reach out to 8 million rural families in Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh which implies covering around 10% of rural poor.

Women make enormous contributions to economies, whether on farms, entrepreneurs or employees or doing unpaid care work at home. Investing in women’s economic empowerment sets a direct path towards gender equality, poverty eradication and inclusive economic growth. Women must know their rights and be able to access legal systems. Besides, they must be involved in the decision making process and exercise their rights and responsibilities to participate equally with men in governance. It will lead the path towards social economic empowerment. In Odisha the work force participation rate of males and females, according to 2011 census is 61.8 percent of total worker are engaged in agriculture related work.The agriculture labourers among total women worker is 57.8 percent. Rural women are the major contributors in agriculture and its allied fields. Her work ranges from crop production, livestock production to cottage industry. Despite such a huge involvement her role and  dignity has yet not been recognized.  Ever since independence, a number of innovative programmes have been launched for the uplift of women in the state. But the result seems to be far from satisfactory. Women are facing problems in their daily life even after they are given equal rights and opportunities like men by the constitution of India.

Besides these factors, rural Odisha lacks infrastructure facilities, unemployment is the biggest challenge in the rural areas that leads to poverty and other social issues. Educating them and empowering them with a source of livelihood matters a lot. The condition of women in more miserable in the rural Odisha with respect to various socio economic aspects. Our experience demonstrates that putting women in leadership positions can catalyse the change process. Their presence in local organisations and committees has convinced the masses of a women’s ability and potential to lead.

Scope:

Under this project women centric villages, the organisation will mobilise more that 1000 HH in 25 villages of four blocks of two districts – Sambalpur and Sundergrah in Western Odisha, by  spreading awareness and information dissemination through skill building trainings and  creating opportunities towards social economic empowerment of women by developing strong leadership among the women.

Key Focus Areas:

The key focus would be to mobilize more than 1000 numbers of rural women on livelihood opportunities at local level, reproductive health, negotiation and marketing skills, effective contribution in village development, developing strong leadership among women, recognition as women farmers and creating an environment of gender equality and equal participation at local level.

Details of the Intervention:

Atmashakti Trust thought for intervention on Women centric villages to develop a strong leadership among women for the overall community and village development. Number of discussion with the village community, field staff and the analytical assessment of basic survey on the status of rural Odisha motivated us to work on the issue. The project is planned to establish model villages where all the government schemes are accessed, active women participation in local governance, equal access to livelihood opportunities, access to health services and equal opportunities and access to educational, health and other services at the local level and strong women leadership of women for overall village development.

Women groups along with the groups of adolescent girls will be established at the local level. Total 500 women, 250 girls and 250 children will be focused in 25 villages of four blocks in Sambalpur and Sundergrah districts of Odisha. 125 number of villages will be covered from periphery of 25 core villages.

Location:

Jamankera, Regali blocks under Sambalpur district and Hemgir and Subdega blocks under Sundergrah district are selected for the project. Atmashakti has an active intervention in these areas since last decade. Experienced staff members working in this area for last ten years shared their views and the current situation that need to be addressed. On the basis of their sharing and our previous experience, the villages to conduct survey is finalised. Detailed survey on each parameter will be done in the selected villages to finalise the core villages.

Below mentioned criteria are set after a discussion with the project team. After the setting of the criteria for target areas, the tentative grassroots team for implementation would be selected. The project would design a survey questionnaire to conduct socio-economic-political  conditions in the areas, and the grassroots team members would conduct the survey in the potential villages.

The intention of the project staff is to select a village in the areas of selected districts and blocks of Western Odisha.

Project Beneficiaries:

Direct beneficiaries: Women and adolescent girls

Indirect beneficiaries: Children, men, village leaders

Objectives:

The broad objective of the project is to comprehend women’s socio economic empowerment and creating a strong women leadership through increasing their income level, their status of health and active participation in local governance and overall village development though women leadership.

• Creating an enabling environment for women’s economic empowerment through livelihood enhancement programs towards Sustainability of the self and the Natural Resources.
• Increasing access to skills and financial/non-financial business development services to improve income-generating capacity and productivity
• Awareness, orientation and exposure for women on agriculture, non-agriculture activities, dairy, goatery, fishing, kitchen garden and about various government schemes to equip them with income enhancement program.
• Increasing awareness and importance of women health, especially reproductive and sexual health
• Improving status of health and hygiene in the village
• Reduced rate of school drop off
• Reduced rate of child marriage and alcoholism in the village
• Strong women leadership in local governance for the village development

Model replication scope

Learning of the current project will shared with team and the model will be replicated in our other intervention areas of Odisha. The process of detailed survey and the selection criteria will be followed for the replication of model in other intervention area.