STATE TIMES NEWS
SAMBA: National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) organised a one day training programme for leaders Self Help Groups (SHGs) at Samba. The programme was attended by group leaders of SHGs promoted by Kristu Jyoti Social Welfare Society under assistance from NABARD.
The programme was inaugurated by Surinder Singh, District Development Manager of NABARD. Singh highlighted the concept of SHG and discussed that although the banking network in rural and semi-urban areas had increased manifold after nationalisation, even then many of the rural households are still dependent on the money lenders, shop keepers and market vendors for their petty credit needs. The needs of these rural poor are small but often arise at unpredictable times and are usually of a marginal nature. Against this background an alternate mechanism for meeting the credit needs of the rural poor in the form of Self Help Groups (SHGs) has been evolved. He apprised that NABARD provides capacity building assistance and financial support to NGO/banks for promotion and broad basing of microfinance operations.
It was also discussed that villages are faced with problems related to poverty illiteracy, lack of skills, health care etc. These are problems that cannot be tackled individually but can be better solved through group efforts. Today these groups can become the vehicle of change for tackling such socio economic problems.
Later, exhaustive training sessions on Management of SHGs, maintenance of accounts and book keeping, types of economic activities SHGs would like to take up individually or as a group etc were undertaken by the resource persons.