Self help groups in social transformation

Self Help Groups (SHGs) are started by non-profit organizations (NGOs) that generally have broad anti-poverty agenda. SHGs are established as local financial intermediaries with their own internal savings and credit business and access to bank refinancing. Self Help Groups are seen as instruments for a variety of goals including developmental institutional building and social capital formation, empowering men and women through skill training and capacity building, developing leadership abilities among poor people, enhancing individual as well as family income by undertaking market-driven enterprises and giving the power of scale to small producer through SHGs and supporting and increasing incremental income among its members by effectively utilising the natural resources for a sustained income, playing as platform for eliminating unemployment and poverty in rural areas, improve socio-economic position of rural poor by increasing income generation potential with financial support and substituting for money lender menace, school enrolments, and improving nutrition and the use of birth control, enhance the social status of rural poor by raising skills and knowledge and fostering confidence among them to strive for social change.1