About Us

Swayam Shikshan Prayog (SSP), meaning Self Education for Empowerment, is a learning and development organization based in Mumbai.

SSP translates its mission by providing technical support and access to social and economic opportunities and promoting community driven entities and forging partnerships with institutional actors.

Latur………..
In 1993, Latur and parts of rural Maharashtra suffered a massive earthquake which claimed over 11,000 lives and damaged over 200,000 houses.

Working to transform this mass-scale disaster recovery into a development opportunity, SSP mobilized grassroots women's groups in reconstruction and local governance.

…………And Beyond
Today, SSP combined operations in ten of the most disaster prone districts in Maharashtra,Gujarat (2001) and Tamilnadu (2004) reach out to over 3,00,000 families. SSP has scaled up by partnering with women's savings and credit groups to promote livelihoods and enterprises for food and renewable energy and facilitated access to improved basic services- health, water and sanitation.

STRENGTHS
 Practices that promote income generation and self-sufficiency

 Savings, Credit and Microfinance
The cumulative savings of women in the SHG network supported by SSP stands at Rs 6.8 million. Federations unite the growing network of women who are increasingly linked to local institutions, banks, and business opportunities. Today, the local federations/ groups are key partners with the two year old Sakhi Samudaya Kosh SSK or Women's Community Bank a Micro Finance Institution. SSK provides loans of Rs 104 million to over 16,000 women for small business/trade and agriculture. For poor women, launching of the MFI meant ready access to capital and enhanced creditworthiness in the eye of banks and improved access to markets.

Social Network Enterprise
In the last three years, SSP has moved steadily from a microenterprise strategy to setting up social businesses that provide sustainable “livelihoods and incomes” to women. A shift was made from grant based projects to market based strategies for achieving development goals through two initiatives business development support (BDS) services and social network enterprise (CBE). The BDS has been instrumental in streamlining social business by conducting customer surveys, market integration, and providing technical support to villagelevel entrepreneurs. Future plans include, incubation of women led small enterprises in the food/nutrition, health and energy sectors which have a ready market linked to SSP and the network's operational areas.

SSP has built a social network for enterprise and development on three pillars:

  • Core Constituency: grassroots women, households and communities
  • Core Sectors: food, energy, water and sanitation, health services, micro credit and micro insurance
  • Core Competencies: social mobilization, grassroots women's network, participatory training and peer to peer learning

All the social enterprises have enhanced opportunities for increased incomes and savings and improved health and food security. The grassroots distribution network of over 800 village level entrepreneurs Jyotis for energy, Laxmis for retailing groceries and Arogya Sakhis for health delivers products and information meeting everyday household needs of 63,000 customers, mainly women and their families in the rural and urban areas in Maharashtra. Average income growth per entrepreneur stands at 33% above the baseline. Significant among these efforts, is the co-creation of a partnership model for the BOP market with large companies such as BP Energy and recently with Godrej. The use of Oorja cooking appliances and clean fuel has led to awareness on energy conservation and reduced indoor air pollution in 50,000 rural homes, leading to savings of Rs 7.7 million in household monthly incomes.

Safe Health, Water and Sanitation
Using participatory mapping, women's groups identified lack of safe health, water and sanitation services, as their topmost prioties to lobby local Panchayats, and district authorities. Swanirman or self-reliance is at the centre of SSP's initiative in collaboration with local Panchayats to place demonstration funds for community driven pilots around disaster reduction, climate change and organic agriculture and food security. The Swanirman Committees women SHG leaders and male local panchayat representatives select projects that are innovative or scale up through peer exchanges on a range of concerns such as hazard mapping, vegetable producer groups, traditional seed processing and collective plans for toilet construction and so on.

SSP's partnership with the Government to redesign the water sector reform resulted in community driven plans and contracts with resources for creating facilities and later for operations and maintenance in 220 villages in Maharashtra and Gujarat. A strong belief in ending open defecation, as a means of restoring dignity for women and improving health of women and children has led SSP to promote lead villages and champions as the recipe to create Clean Villages covering 2,00,000 families in these two states.

In pursuit of affordable services to the poor, SSP has promoted a Community Health Fund that pools savings for over 10,000 members and in turn provides referral services and cover for hospital expenses. The Fund protects families from health shocks and promotes solidarity in case of emergencies. Improved health is at the heart of SSP's strategy to promote women's governance groups that monitor public/ private health centres, and build partnerships to provide door step services for preventive health, maternal health care, HIV/AIDS, etc. Access to health insurance has led to total annual savings of Rs. 4 million for 9000 families.

Building Community Resilience
Disaster crisis represents both danger and an impetus long-term development. SSP is committed to building resilience in the face of sudden climate change and increased disaster risk. In the last decade, SSP and its grassroots networks have led the innovation and transfer of community led recovery by restoring livelihoods, educating owners on safe construction, training masons and setting up sustainable federations and enterprises. In recognition, SSP leads the Global efforts on Community Resilience with Groots International and the Huairou Commision to build community trainers and working with the UNDP and ProVention. In India, SSP is founder member of the National Alliance on DRR- disaster risk reduction and has initiated a Community Disaster Resilience Fund that places funds directly in the hands of local groups and governments.

Strong institutional capacity and a growing infrastructure

 SSP believes strongly in the importance of building and strengthening strong community institutions such as SHGs and federations. Over the years the service delivery infrastructure of SSP has expanded and built significant capacity for poor women and their families. As a result, women are empowered beyond microfinance to participate in initiatives that support entrepreneurship and allow womens groups to play key role in planning and designing of primary health care services, education for children and adolescent girls, water and sanitation facilities in the context of local governance.

Technical and programmatic expertise
Like development, building human and technical expertise is a dynamic process. SSP has consistently focused effort on refining the knowledge and tools available to people at all levels of its network. The following help enhance SSP competencies and functionality.

  • Breadth of Board member expertise – Board members and advisory    clusters represent rich experience in matters of financial    management and development, governance, health, water, energy,    policy advocacy and public administration.
  • Executive leadership – Prema Gopalan, founder and executive    director of SSP, has two decades of managerial and field level    development expertise.
  • Multifaceted management team – SSP’s management team includes    select advisors, an administrator and an experienced project team    leader that designs and monitors operational approaches.
  • Strong program support - All senior team leaders have over five years    of expertise in social mobilisation, institution-building, sector    development and business development services.
  • Qualified local teams – District level resource teams are organized to    provide technical and administrative expertise to colleagues and    partners.
  • Well qualified coordinators – District and sector coordinators have    experience in a broad array of disciplines, including civil engineering,    environmental science, commerce and sociology.
  • Community Resource Teams – Federations, local associations of    microfinance leaders, farmer-experts and entrepreneurs are trained    to transfer expertise to districts and states.

Skill Base

  • Developing organizational capacity for social entreprenuership
  • Investing in new/innovative business models with the potential for producing social change, economic benefits and determining prospects for sustainability
  • Instituting necessary structures and traning relevant participants for key roles
  • Maintaining MIS, a technical database
  • Conducting surveys to determine need, demand and geographic disbursemnt of supply
  • Implementing mechanisms for business processes and streamlined product distribution
  • Convening expert working groups of sector specialists to participate in planning

SELECTED HONORS AND AWARDS

2008: Finalist for the Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2008: Award of the Khemka Foundation with UNDP and Schwab selected from 140 entries in India.

2008: Award Winner in Changemakers Competition for Scaling up Water and Sanitation selected from 265 entries from 54 countries.

2007: Short listed among 25 entries from 240 entries in social business for the Marico Innovation for India Award

2007: Recipient of the Mary Fran Myers Gender and Disaster Award. Prema Gopalan, Founder - Director of SSP, is recognized as an expert in community driven, gender equitable disaster response and resilience initiatives.

2005: SSP nominated to the Advisory Panel of IED Independent Evaluation Division of the World Bank, Washington to critically examine and provide recommendations from evaluation findings of disaster response projects for last twenty years.

Governing Board Members

  1. Ms. Prema Gopalan - Chairperson
  2. Mr. Ranjan Nehru - Treasurer
  3. Mr. Adolph Furtado - Member
  4. Ms. Girija Srinivasan - Member
  5. Mr. V.C. Nadarajan - Member
  6. Mr. Sampath Kumar - Member
  7. Mr. Nisheeth Kumar - Member

FUNDING SUPPORT

  • American Jewish World Service
  • AVERT Society
  • CITIGROUP
  • GROOTS International
  • HIVOS Netherlands
  • Huairou Commission
  • F ord Foundation
  • Government of Gujarat (WASMO)
  • Government of Maharashtra
  • Maharashtra State AIDS Control Society
  • Misereor Germany
  • OXFAM India
  • Sir Ratan Tata Trust

NETWORKS AND PARTNERSHIPS

BP Energy India Ltd., Godrej India Pvt. Ltd. Ashoka Foundation, Covenant Centre for Development, IDPMS, Intellecap, Knowledge Linkgs, Start Up !, Swasth India Services, Tide Technocrats and Uplift India Association.

SSP is a Steering Committee member of GROOTS International, a network of autonomous grassroots women's organisations across forty countries.

She facilitates Disaster Watch - a Global Working Group of the Huairou Commission that seeks to highlight grassroots women's disaster reduction initiatives and upstream lessons from local to global through exchanges, dialogue workshops and www.disasterwatch.net.

Coordinate the Community Disaster Resilience Fund - Global Pilot Project started in India in October 2008 with endorsement from the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) supported by the Groots International and ProVention.

Consortium Principal stakeholder in the GFDRR initiated South - South Cooperation project to foster learning and capacity building in these countries and regions in partnership with the NDMA and CEPREDENAC.


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