Mission
To build and enhance core social, economic and political competencies of grassroots women's collectives and communities with the aim of bringing the rural poor, women and communities from the margins to the mainstream of development.

Swayam Shikshan Prayog (SSP) seeks to build and enhance the core social, economic and political competencies of grassroots women’s collectives and communities and drive them from the margin to the centre of development processes. SSP was established in 1989 as a self-education network and registered as a society in 1998. As a result of its innovative approach, working after three major disasters advancing to local developmnet, since 1993, SSP has experienced a continuous expansion to extend its potential outreach to over 250,000 households.

SSP's portfolio of programs and services are organized along the following sectors:

• Savings and Credit groups and federation
• Promotion of Sustainable livelihoods
• Community led water and environmental sanitation
• Access to community health services

SSP provides technical support for social mobilisation and capacity building for local governance and MIS microplanning pilots, advocacy and knowledge networks.

STRENGTHS
Practices that promote income generation and self-sufficiency

• Microfinance enables the rural women poor to access capital and build credit. SSP operates two microfinance programmes. Since 1998, SSP has mobilised grassroots women's network to form savings and credit groups (15-20 women mobilise savings, lend for household needs and access microfinance) and member-owned federations at the local level. With growing demand, SSP established a community driven (MFI) that has disbursed over Rs. 69.84 million to over 6,805 women Self help groups for productive activities agriculture, small businesses etc. Future loan products include education, housing, consumer finance, etc.

• SSP's Business Development Support Services scopes new opportunities, provides address constraints faced by rural businesses by evaluating viable enterprise opportunities and promoting business-to-business linkages. BDSS has trained over 4,500 women self help groups members on social entrepreneurship.

• Taking advantage of new business opportunities in rural markets, SSP has partnered with commercial entities to create distribution chains that build on the strengths of the grassroots women network. From January 2006 to December 2007, the combined entities outreach to 50,000 consumers/households directly through microfinance and village level entrepreneurs to provide socially relevant products and services. Groups nominate and lend peer support to women village level entrepreneurs. Today, the network endorses relevant products/services - biomass stoves and fuel, essential food and groceries, health insurance. Vision is to build a community ecosystem of non profit and for profit entities that bring together rural producers, entrepreneurs, investors, consumers and stakeholders to create and reach out to rural-urban low income markets.

• Food processing and nutrition initiative in partnership with Access Pvt Ltd, provides essential, high quality commodities at affordable prices to members in the network. Linked to this project the benefits are twofold: SHG networks can turn into producer groups that procure local produce. Local farmers organised into groups have a "ready market" and can turn into suppliers to supply local agricultural produce.

• Micro insurance: Health and life insurance based on a network solidarity model provides health security to women members and their families by building linkages with service providers and educators and promoting a concept of solidarity that pools risk in the case of personal health emergencies. This could be extended to farmer groups and the village households in the operational project areas to protect against crop, climatic stress and growing risks.

Distribution channel in partnership with a multinational company Extensive use of wood fuel harms women and households and adds to depletion of precious natural resources. To address lack of affordable energy sources, SSP promoted Adharam Energy Pvt Ltd by appointing Jyotis or village level entrepreneurs to deliver consumer education, biomass appliances and clean fuel producing an expansive social impact in daily lives of low-income women and households.

Water quality monitoring, management, and conservation - In the context of water sector reforms, SSP supports local panchayats to partner with women's groups and plan and manage sustainable water initiatives in Maharashtra. These projects identify and forge links between clean water availability, sanitary living conditions and general cleanliness and hygiene. This programme can be extended to creating a demand for water conservation and saving practices in relation to agriculture and ground water sources including recharging. Problems inherent in the work of this sector are broad and systematic, and often rooted in an absence of waste disposal systems, transport and delivery infrastructure and basic water.

Building Community Resilience for disaster risk reduction and climate change- SSP has intervened in three regions that were devastated by natural disasters and is seeking to work with women and farmers groups starting with Maharashtra as a start to addressing social dimensions of drought, water scarcity and climatic stress faced by farmers. SSP views disasters as the problem and thus the impetus for development efforts, requiring a long-term approach that combines natural resource management, climate change and disaster risk reduction and governance.

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, and senior coordinators have over a decade 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 who are responsible for designing and monitoring programmes.
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, database management, sector facilitation, field surveys and research
Community Resource Teams - Federations, local associations of SHG networks, community trainers/leaders, farmer-experts and entrepreneurs are trained to transfer expertise across geographies.

SKILLS 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

FUNDING SUPPORT

American Jewish World Service, USA
Allianz Direct Help, Germany
Citigroup/UWI, USA
Ford Foundation, USA
Government of Gujarat and Maharashtra
HIVOS, Netherlands
Misereor, Germany

NETWORKS AND PARTNERSHIPS

National NGO Networks: CARE India, Peoples Science Institute, IDPMS, NIMHANS, UPLIFT India, CCD, GMCL, IDPMS, Intellecap, Pragmatix, SPARC, Tide Technocrats.

Global Networks: ASHOKA, Global Legacy, GROOTS International, Huairou Commission, New School University.