With a vision of empowering women through finance, enterprise and customised services, SAMPADA trust got registered in 2002 and is providing Micro Finance, Micro enterprise and Micro insurance services to around 40,000 women clients in 18 different districts of Maharastra.
They form SHGs of women in each operating villages followed by forming a SMS (sayunkt mahila samiti), a federation of five SHGs. SAMPADA provide loan to SMS and the SMS thenafter gives to the concerned SHGs as per the requirement. SHGs then provide loan to the members. SAMPADA charges an interest of 12% (Flat) for loan termed from 9 months to 24 onths depending upon the nature. The SHGs also involve them in savings activities as each member saves Rs.50 per month. They can also take internal loan from the SHG savings with an annual rate of interest at 2 %.
Once the SHG becomes active and gets some decent amount of savings SAMPDA intervenes with the micro enterprise activities and capacity building of the members. They make the members aware about different ways of livelihood generation and ultimately ends up with creating & financing some micro enterprises for the group. The members work together for the micro enterprise and takes the profit home keeping some percentage for the activities of the group.
Source of income of the end users here are either agriculture (small farmers and agricultural laborers) and animal husbandry. Most of them do not have a proper housing and uses kerosene as the main source of lighting and agricultural waste for cooking. As the housing system is very poor, they are vulnerable to the safety concerns (theft, fear for snakes ect). If they are provided with a good lighting system in their budget, it will drastically boost their life style as well as quality of living. SAMPADA has started providing solar lighting solutions to the poorest of poor clients who do not have access to reliable electricity. They have introduced solar LED lighting systems (mostly 2 lighting systems) with an internal subsidy of Rs.500 on each product. The end users are quite enthusiastic and happy about the lights at their home. Among the 56 households who have taken the lights, almost al has put one light outside their home for safety factor. Light makes a lot sense in their life provided that its designed as per their requirement and paying capacity.
SAMPADA is providing these lights with a collection condition of five-six installments without any interest but inorder to make the program sustainable and reach more people they have to design a different financing strategy keeping in view the clients cash flow and also look at a good durable product.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Citizen of Earth......
NEW DELHI: An auto driver, a midwife, a rose picker...these may not sound like your average consumers of renewable energy but for Harish Hande, a 37-year-old engineer whose solar energy company Selco India recently won the prestigious ‘Green Oscar', it's all about tailoring innovation to match a particular need. "Rural India isn't running microwaves and ACs. Here, a little electricity goes a long way," says the IIT Kharagpur alumnus who founded the company 12 years ago.
Let there be light
The solar panel installed above R Vijaya Kumar's small house on the outskirts of Bangalore has ignited the change from auto driver to entrepreneur. Every day at 4 pm, Kumar drives to the Bomanahalli market on the outskirts of Bangalore with 50 batteries that he hires out to street vendors for Rs 15 per battery per night. He returns at 11 pm to take them back, having made thrice what he would earn as an auto driver. Not only can the vendors give up their polluting kerosene lamps for a cleaner and cheaper energy alternative but Kumar gets enough money to repay the loan he took to buy the solar panels with which he recharges the batteries every day.
Both in Karnataka and Gujarat where Selco works, lives have been touched — and transformed by solar power. From helping midwives in Gujarat to deliver children with the aid of solar lighting kits to giving rose-pickers outside Bangalore solar-powered headlamps so that they can work in the pre-dawn darkness with their hands free, innovation has been the key to success.
"Design has to be customised to fit the needs of the customer. The one-size-fits-all approach that's usually used when the user is from a financially weak background invariably fails," says Hande.
Selco, which won the Ashden Award (or the Green Oscar as it's called) for the second time, has also tied up with the Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA) bank in Gujarat where it plans to sell a range of energy services, including energy efficient stoves, to the bank's 300,000 low-income female customers.
Banking on micro-finance
A few extra hours of work after sundown, less fumes from lamps and more study time for kids — it's all these things that make a difference to people hampered by electricity outages and the reliance on a few expensive litres of kerosene. Selco, say the Ashden award judges, is based on the conviction that solar energy is cheap for the poor but expensive for the rich — that is, poor people can afford to buy solar systems, because they pay so much for other forms of energy, such as kerosene and batteries.
But it's still difficult to convince the poor to shell out anywhere between Rs 18,000 and Rs 20,000 for a standard 40-watt solar light system that can light several 7-watt bulbs and charge batteries which can be used after dark. For daily wagers, that's a stiff financial commitment. That's where microfinance came in, says Hande. Initially most banks were reluctant to lend money to those who earned less than Rs 100 a day but company executives managed to convince them that increased productivity would enable borrowers to repay loans. Now, fewer than 10% of customers default. It also taught Hande that financing had to be as innovative as the product. "While some found repaying Rs 300 a month difficult, they found it easy to put away Rs 10 a day." The answer lay in ensuring a collection mechanism that would work on a daily rather than monthly basis.
Service success
There was still the need to address a misconception — that solar-powered technology doesn't work. "Without after-sales service, the technology gets a bad name," points out Hande. And with ambitious plans of reaching 200,000 customers — the current client base is 80,000 — that's one thing he certainly doesn't want.
Let there be light
The solar panel installed above R Vijaya Kumar's small house on the outskirts of Bangalore has ignited the change from auto driver to entrepreneur. Every day at 4 pm, Kumar drives to the Bomanahalli market on the outskirts of Bangalore with 50 batteries that he hires out to street vendors for Rs 15 per battery per night. He returns at 11 pm to take them back, having made thrice what he would earn as an auto driver. Not only can the vendors give up their polluting kerosene lamps for a cleaner and cheaper energy alternative but Kumar gets enough money to repay the loan he took to buy the solar panels with which he recharges the batteries every day.
Both in Karnataka and Gujarat where Selco works, lives have been touched — and transformed by solar power. From helping midwives in Gujarat to deliver children with the aid of solar lighting kits to giving rose-pickers outside Bangalore solar-powered headlamps so that they can work in the pre-dawn darkness with their hands free, innovation has been the key to success.
"Design has to be customised to fit the needs of the customer. The one-size-fits-all approach that's usually used when the user is from a financially weak background invariably fails," says Hande.
Selco, which won the Ashden Award (or the Green Oscar as it's called) for the second time, has also tied up with the Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA) bank in Gujarat where it plans to sell a range of energy services, including energy efficient stoves, to the bank's 300,000 low-income female customers.
Banking on micro-finance
A few extra hours of work after sundown, less fumes from lamps and more study time for kids — it's all these things that make a difference to people hampered by electricity outages and the reliance on a few expensive litres of kerosene. Selco, say the Ashden award judges, is based on the conviction that solar energy is cheap for the poor but expensive for the rich — that is, poor people can afford to buy solar systems, because they pay so much for other forms of energy, such as kerosene and batteries.
But it's still difficult to convince the poor to shell out anywhere between Rs 18,000 and Rs 20,000 for a standard 40-watt solar light system that can light several 7-watt bulbs and charge batteries which can be used after dark. For daily wagers, that's a stiff financial commitment. That's where microfinance came in, says Hande. Initially most banks were reluctant to lend money to those who earned less than Rs 100 a day but company executives managed to convince them that increased productivity would enable borrowers to repay loans. Now, fewer than 10% of customers default. It also taught Hande that financing had to be as innovative as the product. "While some found repaying Rs 300 a month difficult, they found it easy to put away Rs 10 a day." The answer lay in ensuring a collection mechanism that would work on a daily rather than monthly basis.
Service success
There was still the need to address a misconception — that solar-powered technology doesn't work. "Without after-sales service, the technology gets a bad name," points out Hande. And with ambitious plans of reaching 200,000 customers — the current client base is 80,000 — that's one thing he certainly doesn't want.
Friday, March 23, 2007
WOMEN and ENERGY
Prasanta Biswal
SELCO India
Biomass fuels are still the main source of energy used across the globe, especially in rural areas. The fuels are mainly applied in traditional stoves posing various health hazards. A WHO report says some three billion people worldwide burn traditional biomass (wood, dung, crop residues etc.) and coal for home cooking and heating. The number of people using these fuels are expected to rise substantially by 2020. This wide spread use results in the premature deaths of an estimated 1.6 million people each year from breathing elevated levels of indoor smoke, with women and children being the most significantly affected.
Indoor air pollution from household energy ranks as the fourth leading health risk in poor developing countries. Breathing elevated levels of indoor smoke from home cooking and heating practices more than doubles a child’s risk of serious respiratory infection and may also be associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes.
Fuel collection a task mostly burdened to women and girl children is an equally hazardous task. Fuel wood collection is also known to cause other serious consequences such as physical abuse to female of any age and accidents etc. It is often said, that the real rural energy crisis, is a rural women’s time. Rural women as the main provider of household energy, often have to commit long hours to collect fuel. Women work longer than men in providing human energy for survival activities such as fuel collection cum transportation, cooking and food processing. Condition is worse whenever and wherever there is fuel scarcity, as women will have to work longer hours, walk longer distance; therefore they have to spend a lot more energy. The extent to which the crisis affects the population should also be considered; FAO estimates the proportion of rural women affected by fuel wood scarcity, range from 60% in Africa to nearly 80% in Asia and nearly 40% in Latin America.
Economic opportunities of many rural women and survival of rural families are also dependent upon the sustainable supply of biomass energy. Women are also often involved in the informal sector such as small scale or cottage industries; these economic enterprises being often critical to many families economic survival.
The problem has been taken seriously by various Governments and organisations across the world since a long time but still the result is not satisfactory. When “Magan Chulo” was promoted in India during 1940`s, Dr. Raju clearly indicated this when he wrote “you are working for the emancipation of women. Don’t forget the millions of your sisters in the bondage of criminally unhygienic kitchens”. Since then there are various Improved Cook Stove programmes are being implemented across the globe.
The benefits of the improved cook stove programmes are expected to give some relax to the women in terms of reduced cooking and fuel collection time which could mean that women and/or men have more time for other activities; reduced risks associated with fuel collection, indoor air pollution and ultimately providing a space to breathe clean air in their home.
India currently bears the largest number of IAP-related health problems in the world. An estimated 500,000 women and children die in India each year due to IAP-related causes. This accounts for 25% of estimated IAP-related deaths worldwide.
In response to these challenges, founding governments and organisations launched the Partnership for Clean Indoor Air (PCIA) at the world summit for sustainable Development in Johannesburg in September 2002. Till now there are more than 150 organisations worldwide has joined the partnership for clean indoor air and are contributing their resources and expertise to improve health, livelihood and quality of life by reducing exposure to indoor air pollution, primarily among women and children from household energy use.
The 3rd biennial partnership for clean indoor air forum has been organized at Bangalore from 20th to 23rd March 2007. Large number of Govt. and Non Govt. organisations from 24 countries have participated in this forum and discussed about new technologies, approach, success stories, experiences and approach for reducing indoor air pollution. The forum was addressed by the inaugural panel including director of Shell Foundation Mr.Kurt Hoffman and Deputy Assistant Administrator of USEPA (United states Environment protection agency) Mr.John Beale. Both of them insisted commitment from people across the globe towards making this effort successful and sustainable. The forum decided the future goals, strategies and activities for the next 3 years. The forum is basically acting as the coordinator among the partners to globalize the success.
Feedback @ prasant.bsl@gmail.com
Monday, January 22, 2007
GYANODHAM
Being one of the largest and fastest growing economy in the world still India is behind Bangladesh and Srilanka in terms on basic human facilities. A huge percentage of our population is starving though we have lack of space to store our over produced food grains; our people are illiterate though we are called the best brains. Still 26 % of our population is bellow poverty line which is not only financial. The poverty in India is a combination of financial , social, physical , educational and lot more and the important thing is all these are interlinked with each other.
Lack of basic education makes one person handicapped and minimizes the chances of employment and better quality of life which leads to financial poverty and finally results into lot more social and household problems. The existing educational system is promoting a certain segment of society but there are still 35% of our population are far from the basic educational facilities.
A group of young professionals from diversified educational background but having a single mission to see the nation as a developed one have come forward and formed an organization called “Gyanodham” Its less an organization and more of an idea, which will try to provide a platform for better education to the deprived. It aims to provide a quality education which will lead to a better quality of life and overall development of the society.
The people behind it are social entrepreneurs, professionals from management sector, non-profit , renewable energy, micro finance etc. These people are enthusiastic and determinant to achieve their goal with hard work and dedication. The organizational head office is in Delhi and have aim to work all over India and open branches in at least the state of its members, i.e. Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Punjab, Orissa, Karnataka, Rajasthan. With a noble approach and cause, Gyanodham has started putting its small steps forward towards its mission from the day of its registration i.e 26th December 2006.
Being one of the executive-members of Gyanodham, I wish all success to its future endeavors and hope that I can contribute my best in the development of my nation through Gyanodham.
Lack of basic education makes one person handicapped and minimizes the chances of employment and better quality of life which leads to financial poverty and finally results into lot more social and household problems. The existing educational system is promoting a certain segment of society but there are still 35% of our population are far from the basic educational facilities.
A group of young professionals from diversified educational background but having a single mission to see the nation as a developed one have come forward and formed an organization called “Gyanodham” Its less an organization and more of an idea, which will try to provide a platform for better education to the deprived. It aims to provide a quality education which will lead to a better quality of life and overall development of the society.
The people behind it are social entrepreneurs, professionals from management sector, non-profit , renewable energy, micro finance etc. These people are enthusiastic and determinant to achieve their goal with hard work and dedication. The organizational head office is in Delhi and have aim to work all over India and open branches in at least the state of its members, i.e. Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Punjab, Orissa, Karnataka, Rajasthan. With a noble approach and cause, Gyanodham has started putting its small steps forward towards its mission from the day of its registration i.e 26th December 2006.
Being one of the executive-members of Gyanodham, I wish all success to its future endeavors and hope that I can contribute my best in the development of my nation through Gyanodham.
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