Women in SHGs spoke about bright futures for their daughters and want to work towards increasing the educational opportunities that are available to them in their village of Karauli. Photo: Carmina Rinker

I recently returned from a study and service-leaning trip in India. While was there I traveled with a small group of Portland State University students and faculty, visiting several grassroots NGOs working with women's microfinance groups in Maharashtra. In this part of the world, Self Help Groups (SHGs) go beyond lending, they also are tackling issues like domestic violence, health care and politics.

Sitting in matching blue Saris with gold trim, about ten women are seated inside a small room passing chai and biscuits to their foreign guests. They discuss their business ventures, their children, and ask our small group of American students questions about our lives in the United States. One mother is beaming with pride as she coaches her small daughter to recite a poem, "Airplane, Airplane" in perfect English.

With the growing popularity of Kiva.org and the heightened awareness of the Grameen bank, many of us Westerners are just now discovering the impact of microfinance programs as a tool of poverty alleviation and women's empowerment. But for hundreds of women in the village of Karauli in Maharashtra, India, this is old news. Women here have been active in Self Help Groups (SHGs) for close to a decade or more, and in this time their participation has extended far beyond the collective savings, loans, that are the most basic elements of microfinance schemes. Self Help Groups are groups of women who come together to save money collectively, and from their collective savings they can take individual loans in order to make repairs on their house, buy goods for their microenterprises, send their children to school, or for whatever purpose they need it for. In addition the SHGs act as a social support network through which the women can come together to address individual and broader social issues such as domestic violence, women's health, and sanitation issues in their communities. SHGs differ from Joint Liability Groups (as used by the Grameen Bank), in that they usually have about 10-20 members whose loans come directly from the group's own savings instead of from a bank or Microfinance Institution. In order to mobilize more credit for larger loans, groups of SHGs often come together to form a Federation.

While visiting two of thirty or so SHGs that are active in Karauli, a village with a population of around 7,000, women spoke about taking out loans to send their children to the university in the nearby city of Pune, large entrepreneurial ventures such as opening a hotel, and accumulating a collective group savings of Rs 8.5 lakhs (equivalent to about 17,000 US dollars). Yet beyond the financial benefit that these women enjoy through their participation in the SHGs (as well as the pride and confidence that goes along with it), the women also spoke about other changes that extend beyond their individual and family levels, and to their greater communities. This ranges from launching village clean-ups to rid their communities of litter, participating in village politics (panchayats). The women who have adopted the blue sari uniform to wear to their monthly meetings organized a 100 Woman March to the Office of the Minister of Irrigation of Maharastra to raise their concerns over water availability and sanitation. This group has been together for over eight years, and during that time every women in the room — about half of their 20 members — has served a term as SHG leader. They explain that before joining the SHG they had little to no interaction and involvement in public spaces, yet with the leadership skills they have now developed as well as the mutual trust and social capital that has been built through the group, they now feel less inhibited to be active in the public domain.

These SHGs have been organized and facilitated by the NGO Chaitanya, based in the nearby town of Rajgurunagar. Chaitanya came into existence in 1993, and began by incorporating microfinance programs using SHGs in rural areas. Today they have expanded to include many other programs that address issues of livelihood and agriculture, legal needs, education, and health of the rural poor.