People s Forum with the support of State Urban Development Authority has been involved in catalysing the formation and capacity building of SHGS under the project of State Urban Livelihood Mission.
Facilitated the process for establishing linkages of SHGs with Banks by opening of bank accounts.
Capacity Building: Facilitated SHGs and its members to access financial services like saving, insurance, remittance and credit.
People's forum has taken this initiative of Business correspondent to deliver the services and challenges to new heights. With the objective of ensuring greater financial inclusion to the mass of women in the rural area, People s forum has decided to serve as Business Correspondent for the bank by offering a sprig of product to its client base. The use of the BC model has already shown the potential by changing the lives of millions of people in the remotest parts of the country. For poor and vulnerable people, who could not think of going to the bank, banking has come to them.
More than 9,000 women have been empowered by People's Forum financial support to start their own business by providing micro credit to the marginalized and vulnerable groups like Person with Disability, Widows/Single Mothers/Unmarried Women, Family Members of Leprosy Affected Patients, Eunuch/ Trans Genders by providing them with greater access to financial services.
Having this belief in mind, a wider network of SHG infrastructure is created in village level with all levels of financial, capacity building and handholding support eventual creating a larger social infrastructure to care and support such women in the nook and corner of the state and other parts. Now there is a network of 16,200 well - equipped SHGs with 1,62,000 women members across 17 districts of Odisha and 5 other states. In this direction various initiatives have been taken like critical business and financial support to various disabled people, single window and transgender people to make them entrepreneurs enabling respectable social space for them and reaching out to 9532 such special category people like disabled, widows and transgender and transforming them entrepreneurs through soft loans and business development services.