Let us present here the success story of a group of women belonging to families with poor economic status. They have defied dogmas of the community and came out of shell with drive and determination to turn around things. In 1999, 13 motivated rural poor women formed a Women Self-help Group (WSHG) called “Pragati” in the village Jaipur of Satyabadi block in Puri district of Odisha state in India. The women were so poor that they had started savings a fistful of rice every day from each of their households. At the end of every month, they used to sell the rice @Rs. 10/- per kg. As a result, Rs. 130/- in total was saved monthly by this group. Consequently, the group savings increased and now the corpus fund is in lakhs...Read more