Importance Of Self Help Group

Self help group is group of rural poor who have volunteered to organize themselves in to a group for eradication of poverty of the members. They agree to save regularly and convert their savings in to a common fund known as the group corpus. The members of the group agree to use this common fund and such other funds that they may receive as a group through a common management. The group formation will keep in view the following broad guidelines:

Generally a self help group may consist of 10-20 persons. However, in difficult areas like deserts, hills and areas with scattered and sparse population and in case of minor irrigation and disabled persons, this number may be from 5-20. All members of the group should belong to families below the poverty

The term empowerment was defined as ‘a distribution of social power and control of resources in favour of women’. Empowering of women pre-supposes a drastic, dynamic and democratic change in the perception of an expectation from women in our society. There are lot of efforts being made for the purpose of empowering women; self help group is one of the predominant concepts of empowering women. Self help groups are used to achieve economic security for women through whom their family condition can also be enhanced. It will help the rural women to get access to information, networks and resources to know how to gain access to their own and without rely on others for survival. So the self esteem of women members of self help groups are also improved through the participation in various activities of self help group. So this study concentrates on the women self help group animator’s perceived level of self esteem and how they are able to manage their self help group as well as family responsibilities simultaneously which in turn ultimately builds enough confidence with in

All the respondents are educated but up to the higher secondary level only.

A high percent (90%) of the respondents are able to get support from their spouses and their family members. Cent percent of the respondents are successfully managing domestic and self help group activities. More than 3/4th (78%) of the respondents joined in self help group by the motivation they received from others. All the respondents agreed that development is highly possible in self help groups.

A vast majority of the respondents are of the opinion that they are able to express (82%) their thoughts freely, they can solve the problems of self help group effectively (94%), gained self confidence and able to work independently (96%) and they feel that they posses the leadership qualities (94%), and follow the rules and regulations of the self help group successfully as animators of self help