Joint secretary

Gram Bharati Samiti (GBS) means Society for Rural Development, has been working as a NGO for rural women's empowerment in Rajasthan for last 22 years. With this object we have been implementing many activities including raising awareness, providing with legal support, protecting their human rights, preventing domestic violence and other kinds of atrocities etc.

Our focus has mainly been on mobilizing these poor rural women to form Self Help Groups (SHGs) and motivating them to make small savings and depositing in the Bank accounts opened in the name of their groups and getting support from the banks as soft loans for their petty household needs. This way the poor women could be emancipated from exploitation of local money lenders.

During this period of 5 years 500 SHG have been formed involving over 5,000 rural women. The total saving of these SHG for last 3 years has reached INR 15 million (nearly $ 375,000) which is a record in the area. The campaign of forming SHGs is spreading extensively in the neighboring area and more and more women are joining the groups.

Many of these women are traditional entrepreneurs and have started producing beautiful handicraft articles after undergoing adequate training.

Now we are planning to organize trading for the 5,000 women entrepreneurs in order to enable them in becoming economically self reliant and upgrade their status in the family and society as well ultimately leading them towards a dignified life.