Women Empowerment and Development (WED)

Women empowerment and Development Agency is an NGO working in central parts of India. The
new chairperson has taken charge one year ago. Over the past one year she has travelled across the
geographies interacted with people and understood the activities promoted by WED.

Below is a narrative above the NGO Women Empowerment and Development ( WED).

WED is a NGO that implements various programs through community collectives, mostly Self Help
Groups (SHGs). These livelihood enhancement programs across the areas of its operation have been
sustainably transforming lives..

WED as part of its mandate engages rural households through its SHG program. For the rural
households agriculture is a primary source of income.

WED through its years of operation has a formidable presence in many districts through its network of
CFs Collective federation and the SHG’s. This network can be an effective platform for new initiatives
through its aggregation of members and learning and training activities.

The structure and working of WED can be summarized as follows.

WED has women SHG as a unit at the villages. And at the district level there is a Collective Federation
managing the network of SHG’s. The collective federation has a manager responsible for the activities
of the SHG’s . Each CF’s are also staffed with livelihood consultant an accountant. Central level
tracking of all informations are done at the CF’s.

In total there are over 300 CF’s spread across the areas of operation with over 10,000 SHG’s. The total
number of members at each of the CF’s range from 1000 to 7000 depending on the area of operation.

The new chairperson made a note of the strength weakness opportunities and threats of her
organization.

Strength

 Vintage: Over a period of past two decades this has been a continuous program where by the
collectives are now organised and supported by the CF’s.
 Institution building: Over the two decades the organisation has developed with structures and
verticals business activities and internal checks and balances.
 Capacity building programs: Over the past two decade the capacity building programs
undertaken by WED has helped in improving the skill set of the women members.
 Credit Cycle Experience: The ICICI bank has disbursed 1500 Crore as per the latest report to
all the SHG’s. The SHG’s have completed several cycles of taking the credit from the bank and
repaying to the bank. A good information level is now available about the financial disciplines of
the SHG’s and credit ratings possible for the SHG’s. The credit needs for the business plans
submitted can be evaluated based on this data.
 IT Infrastructure: All the CF’s are now connected by financial software and it is possible to track
the performance indices through the software.
  Based on the local advantages most of the CF’s have taken up the value chain activities and
experienced the nuances of the same.
 There are many collectives which focus on the special value chains such as organic value
chains
 Many of the collectives and CFs are present in areas producing large volumes of agri
commodity crops like soybean, maize and cotton.
Weaknesses
 The different CF are at different stages of development hence it is not possible to have a
blanket approach with all the CFs’.
 Awareness gap in information about what the other CF activities. There could be opportunities
for one or many CF’s to gain from the activity of one CF, but currently the CF don’t have an
idea what are the activities happening in the other places. Ex- The Bhandara CF is undertaking
the manufacture of Tussar Silk Sarees, which is a very quality product and marketable in other
city CFs. Even in the neighbouring Nagpur Urban CF who is looking for ideas is not aware of
this opportunity.
 Value chain activities are fragmented and disconnected: The value chain activities are now
focussed at the local level and very small in size and fragmented.
 As of now there is no effort for making the geographical connectivity and leveraging each other
strengths
 Often corporates approach for procurement of commodities from WED but organisation is not
able to give a visibility about availability of produce available.
 Though there are organic value chains available in minimum intervention farming areas, those
produce do not get expected price returns.

Opportunities
 As such the platform is well developed with institutional and IT infrastructure for activities to be
connected and scaled up.
 There is a good market available within WED itself for the identified scalable value chain
opportunities.
 The collectives will need various services from the CF’s for scaling up the value chain activity
and each of these services can become as an income opportunity for the CF.
The new chairperson also identified and graded the opportunities available within the CF’s to scale up
the same.

A: Large size opportunity with maximum number of members getting impacted and high scalability
potential. These will be the immediate opportunities that WED can work with the enablers. There are
oppurtunities like Paddy , Maize etc in which the SHG’s work which are all very huge in size with huge
number of participating members. Anything meaningful done in these will be impacting the lives of lot of
members.

B: These are opportunities which are medium sized. Chilly cold storage may not be very large
compared to other opportunities at a cumulative level. But these still can be large enough for some of
the CF’s.
C: These are small size opportunities and very limited scalability potential. However, the support
expected by these activities will be very small. For example, the neem seed coated UREA project
undertaken at the Nashik CF or the Small Bee honey making unit or the Jamun Seed powder making
unit are small size but profitable opportunities.

D: These are very small , complex and local initiatives which has not scalability potential and large
impact foot print. Example the Hakka Noodle making unit at Akola. This is a very small and complex
activity undertaken at a local level.

While the new chairperson has done her homework and understood things in great detail about the
organization she decided to enlist agri-tech company Arya to work with her and help her in laying out
the future plan.

The future challenges for her are as below.

The Collective Federation has some expenses for maintaining their activities. These expenses are the
cost of running an office , salary expenses and other travel and training expenses. Till now the funding
for all these activities was supported by government grants. Now it is time for weaning out of the grants
and donations. The CF’s should be able to generate their own revenue for sustaining the activities.

Over the two decades lot of capacity building programs have been done and information infrastructure
is in place. Now it is time to scale up the activities and increase the income for the members.

Most of the members have their main family earning coming from farming. So she decided the study for
the consultant should center around the farming activities.

Expectations from the participants towards the case analysis.

Assuming you are the consultant deployed by Arya to WED, please come out with an action plan for
WED leveraging tech tools which can help member farmers of collective improve their income.