Today's visit to Hosekote village was quite different than the village visit near Pondicherry. We had the opportunity to spend time in a rural village on a normal day, not during a festival. Yet we were still met with warm hospitality in the form of tea, biscuits, and flowers. We began the morning learning about "Chetana", the village's independently run NGO that Christ University's Centre for Social Action helped start. Chetana is run solely by women and they focus the project on childhood education, nutrition, and hygiene as well as women empowerment and the formation of self help groups (SHGs).
We met with the Board of Directors for Chetana to further understand the SHGs. All of the board members are women, it is very common for SHGs or other improvement projects in poor communities to be run by women. This is because a large majority of men from poor families have become alcoholics and are unable to support their families. Hosekote women found a solution to feeding their families and educating their children through SHGs. SHGs are composed of approximately 5-10 women in the community who pool together their money to create mini banks. When women in SHGs in communities surrounding Hosekote need money to start a small business, buy a sheep or goat, or send their child to school, they will propose their project to the Board of Directors who will determine whether or not the mini banks will give a loan. The Board of Directors oversees around 60 village SHGs. Already the Board has given loans to construct a toilet in every household in Hosekote as well as send multiple children to private schools where they receive quality education.
Christ University's Centre for Social Action (CSA) was able to remove themselves from the project in 2010, after seven years of developing Chetana. Now the program is self-sustaining, one of the first in CSA history and will serve as a model for NGOs working in other rural communities. In addition to making visible improvements in the community, Chetana has created a stronger sense of community in the village. The Board told us five years ago different families in the community would avoid interacting due to superiority complexes. But the formation of SHGs has led to close bonds between the women of the community. They now smile at each other and stop to chat in public. Additionally, women are more willing to help each other out when water runs short or they need to trade for food.
In the future, the Board of Directors hopes to turn the mini banks into a private bank to increase the number of loans they can give and improvements the village will see. They've developed 50 goals for the village and look forward to meeting one after the other. Overall, our group left the village with a strong sense of admiration for the resilience and resourcefulness displayed by the women of Hosekote village. These women and Chetana are contributing positively to the quickly changing Indian society.
