Ahmedabad, March 29, 2023: In the arid and semi-arid landscape of Gujarat, access to drinking water is a key challenge in various villages. Taking this as one of the focal points of driving a change in the lives of women, GHCL Foundation, the corporate social responsibility (CSR) arm of GHCL has taken various initiatives to make lives of the women better in villages around its plant locations. At the core of these initiatives is empowering village women through community meetings, capacity building and enabling the formation of Self-Help Groups (SHGs).
A case in point is Alidhra village of Sutrapada taluka of Gir-Somnath district, where GHCL Foundation helped implement the drinking water scheme under the National Rural Drinking Water Programme (NRDWP). “Direct tap water connectivity for drinking water and that for domestic use was a challenge in the village. Any water problem will directly affect the lives of women,” said Mr. N. N. Radia, President & COO (Soda Ash),GHCL.
To address the issue and to understand the problem, representatives of GHCL Foundation held a meeting with the village women. Even though they were reluctant initially, the encouragement from the Sarpanch, Harshaben, eventually helped GHCL to implement the scheme in the village.
“Women of the village came together to form the MahilaPani Samiti and collected funds worth 10% of the total project cost and supervised and handled all the operations of laying the pipeline network. While implementing the project, GHCL Foundation representatives realised the lack of sanitation facilities. Once the household tap water connections were in place, GHCL Foundation once again roped in women of the village, contributing towards building toilets to make the village open defecation-free (ODF).” Added Mr. Radia
Empowering the rural communities through a series of initiatives around its plant locations has remained the focal point of GHCL Foundation’s efforts.
SHGs have remained long-sustaining models of driving a change in the rural areas. Over the years, GHCL Foundation has been relentlessly working with village communities to form SHGs.
One such women led SHG was the RamdevpirMahila Vikas Mandal (RMVM), also situated in Sutrapada taluka of Gir Somnath district. RMVM began with an objective to enable financial savings made by women and eventually grew into different areas of operation. Women of the village were never in the habit of saving. Besides making them aware, their financial inclusion through opening their bank accounts was the first step to enable them to save. After a series of interventions by GHCL Foundation, the SHG began with small savings, eventually graduating to micro-lending and today, it has a cumulative saving of ₹ 1.04 lakh. Over the years since its formation in 2016, the corpus has beenutilised to lend credit to the villagers for emergency expenditures and financial support.
GHCL Foundation undertook several internal and external exposure visits to women aware of the good practices. A series of capacity-building initiatives through training and entrepreneurship skill development were also facilitated by GHCL Foundation to make their SHG operations better.
One such exposure visit of RMVM was to the Amul Cattle-feed Factory, after which women proactively pushed for setting up a cattle-feed centre in the village. Women members of the SHG largely hail from families dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods.
After the GHCL Foundation supported the initiative, the cattle-feed centre was operationalised in August 2021. As on December 31, 2022, the centre had a turnover of Rs 7.06 lakh. Cattle feed business encouraged women to become entrepreneurs and at the same time, it helped improve the productivity of milch animals.
With GHCL Foundation’s support, RMVM later also took to menstrual hygiene management by distributing reusable sanitary napkins among group members and women of the village, in a move to encourage safe and hygienic menstruation practices.
