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OUTREACH
covers approximately 900 villages along with 36 NGO
(Non Government Organisation) partners to whom
technical and managerial support services are
provided.
The main thrust of OUTREACH's work is towards
community based poverty alleviation and restoration of
degraded primary environments in drought regions in
South India.
OUTREACH is also a leading resource and
training organisation in participatory approaches. It
has pioneered and developed the use and application of
Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) techniques in a
wide range of development situations, nationally and
internationally.
OUTREACH, since its establishment has been
conducting developmental work through community-based
organisations i.e., Self-Help Groups (SHG), Cluster
Level Associations (CLA - Federation of 10-15 SHGs)
and user groups. As it aims for the sustainability of
the programmes, which are managed by the client
community, it follows such an approach.
As of now, it has 1506 women SHGs with 22576 members /
families and 94 CLAs. They have an owned fund of Rs.
45 million, raised through small weekly savings and
lending activity among themselves on a service charge
basis of their own. Their funds have been rotated by
2.5 times for the said purpose.
As the SHGs are able to provide only small and
short-term loans to its members and are not adequately
assisted with large loans by the formal financial
institutions and banks for income generation
activities OUTREACH has entered the Micro
Finance venture and started supporting people for land
based and non-land based income generation
enterprises. |
