Programmes

With support of Walmart Foundation, project UDAAN aims to strengthen the functioning of 20 existing Farmer Producer Organizations (FPO), to enhance women’s participation in the FPOs and to create model women FPOs. It also aims to promote climate resilient practices among member farmers of the FPOs.

ACCESS will work to enhance income of individual small holder farmers and build the sustainability of FPOs by incorporating value addition of commodities to their existing marketing practices for obtaining competitive prices for their products. ACCESS will also create model FPOs for learning and for providing models of capacity building that could be emulated for other FPO promoters, Govt agencies and funders. It will provide supplementary trainings on FPO governance, management, oversight, and leadership to women farmers to enhance their agency in household and collectives through greater ownership of and active participation in the FPOs and will introduce climate resilient farming practices through the program.

ACCESS aims to improve farmer and FPO incomes by improving price realisation and by assisting in developing value added products for the FPO. The project will also lead to adoption of climate resilient agri-practices by the farmers, enhance women’s agency in household and collectives through greater ownership of and active participation in FPOs.

The project funded by Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth and USAID, aimed at enhancing women’s agency and decision-making within the household and business to impact financial well-being and business management.

ACCESS selected 3000 women kirana owners in three cohorts and provided training on various financial inclusion, digital literacy and business skills training themes to enhance the social and economic empowerment of women by building their capacity to own and manage their kirana enterprises.

The women entrepreneurs have reported improved sales, and business management knowledge hence have a clear business plan than before for their businesses. They are active users of financial institutions for saving, credit and of digital banking platforms for transactions in their business.

To revitalize and provide a competitive edge to the handloom weavers in four clusters (Nuapatna, Bankura, Kota, Maheshwar) through design, technology and market interventions, and position them in highest value markets.

ACCESS has provided market linkages to the weavers under the Living Looms of India brand, operationalized the LLI e-commerce portal, strengthened governance of the LLI Producer Company, and facilitated the weavers access to government entitlements. Apart from this, ACCESS has also improved fly shuttle looms to increase efficiency in production, established Common Facility Centers (CFCs) and organized design intervention workshops to improve the product marketability.

In the first phase, the project has enabled the livelihoods of around 1000 weavers through the creation of a producer company under the brand name of Living Looms of India. Around 700 weavers were provided with various training on technical skill enhancement, financial literacy and entrepreneurship. With the help of market linkage support for their products, the weavers have been able to enhance their income by at least 40 percent.

To alleviate child labor from the handicraft sector for concerned household in some of the pocket of Jaipur city by providing appropriate skill, business development services and sustainable market linkage to the women artisans from these households.

In this project, ACCESS has established a Producer Company with 600 women artisans where they were engaged in making hand-crafted products viz. lacquer products, garments, and embroidered lifestyle products. This Producer Company was created to promote sustainable livelihood to ensure better income for the producers through an organization of their own. ACCESS has also established a production cum training center in Paharganj area of Jaipur with the capacity to run 100 sewing machines at a time and provided market linkages to these women artisans and helped the Producer Company achieve a turnover of Rs.78 lakhs since its inception.

The Producer Company established by ACCESS have provided the women artisans regular employment opportunities and their incomes by at least 30 percent. This in turn has helped in allievating the engagement of child labour in the handicraft industry of Jaipur. Now the Producer Company has a strong board of women artisans who are highly skilled workers in lacquer, stitching, and embroidery artwork. The company now has around 800 members.

Providing dignified livelihood opportunities to the refugees living in Delhi and Haryana through skill development, entrepreneurship and market linkages.

As a part of the project deliverables, ACCESS provided counseling services to all the 2,000 refugee households in 2015 and another 1,500 refugee households in 2016; provided training on life skills, financial literacy, functional literacy, and vocational trade to 600 refugees who were doing menial jobs before the intervention.

600 refugees from the vicinities of Vikaspuri, Bhogal, Okhla, Wazirabad, and Khajuri Khas in the National Capital Region of Delhi, India have taken up dignified livelihood options such as running their own small business and other formal jobs in various sectors.

ACCESS-BRAC UPGI partnership is committed to supporting the policy research and advocacy for the adoption and scaling of ‘graduation style’ programming for poverty alleviation in India.

ACCESS undertook research for contextualizing the Graduation approach in India, learning from the highly successful UPGI in Bangladesh and as a part of this research, visited Trickle Up’s field sites in Odisha and BRAC’s in Bangladesh to observe and learn from their graduation interventions.

Based on the research and cross-learning experiences, ACCESS has proposed for a tailored Graduation approach in Rajasthan with the SRLM Rajasthan (Rajeevika) by launching a new scheme, named the Chief Minister’s Grameen Utthan Yojana, exclusively for livelihoods promotion of the rural ultra-poor women youth of Rajasthan living in the margins to sustainably bring them out of extreme poverty. This scheme intends to enable the poorest often left out of central and state development/livelihood programs due to physical and caste-based exclusion, access new, diversified and sustainable livelihoods, small business and employment opportunities alongside linking them with the existing social protection system which would open up economic and social opportunities and increase their resilience, breaking their poverty trap. The program targets to reach 100,000 households across 6 districts in Rajasthan.

Supported by Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth and HSBC, BuddhiMoney aims to equip MSE business owners with tools and resources to help improve their business and financial acumen, thus increasing their productivity and profitability.

ACCESS created a unique blend of technology and innovative training methods through an animated character – BuddhiMoney to educate the MSMEs business owners on mobile banking, registering their businesses, using the Internet as a tool, and accessing credit in an easy-to-understand manner. Short messages from BuddhiMoney were also sent to the business owners via social media.

What was the impact outcome – A very high percentage of MSMEs reported improved access to financial services and understanding of financial planning. The project enabled inclusion of MSMEs in the mainstream financial sector through enhanced digital financial literacy and innovative solutions.