In India we offer our support through two projects financed by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). One project is part of the Special Initiative “One World- No Hunger” (SEWOH)- Green Innovation Centres for the Agriculture and Food Sector in cooperation with Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internatinale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).
As sub-project of the regional programme ‘Promotion of Cooperative Self-Help Organisations in Asia’, DGRV together with its non-governmental long-term India partner APMAS – Andhra Pradesh Mahila Abhivruddhi Society has developed a pilot model for the self-regulation of women self-help groups in India to evolve into self-reliant organisations.
The project started in 2008 in the Kamareddy Cluster in Telangana State with more than 6,000 self-help groups (SHG) and about 75,000 members, all of whom were women. The aim of the cooperation was to enable the members to manage their SHG independently, to design the processes, to establish supporting network structures and thus to lead them successfully and sustainably to the benefit of their members.
Built on the successful pilot of SHG Sector Own Control (SOC), the project aims to up-scale and mainstream sector own control systems in order to contribute to the promotion of Self-Help-Groups and their federations to realize their full potential for engaging in microfinance and sustainable livelihoods. The SOC-model allows for strong governance structures within the Self-Help system and relies on capacity development for its members in order to enable them to manage and steer their own SHG.
Since 2018, APMAS and DGRV started to transfer this approach, which has been tried and tested at SHG-level, to agricultural producer organisations – popularly known as Farmer Producer Organisations (FPO).
As part of the project DGRV and APMS conduct, amongst others, cooperative knowledge trainings, seminars, capacity (building) trainings and business plan trainings.
By promoting cooperative self-help organisations, the project’s objective is to increase the economic and social participation of broad sections of the population and to the improvement of local and regional economic and social structures.
The project aims to strengthen cooperative structures, particularly in agriculture, the small business sector and the financial sector. Cooperative self-help systems develop further (into multi-stage systems) and enable the integration of economically disadvantaged groups and regions into the economic process and thus into society. The project thus contributes to increasing prosperity in selected Indian states, to improving general living conditions and thus to poverty reduction (overall objective).
Some activity highlights in 2019 include:
APMAS is an NGO with which a successful cooperation with the DGRV exists since 2007. In the South Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, APMAS is the leading professional organisation in the areas of capacity building, strengthening and quality assessment of self-help groups and other local community-based organisations (CBOs) as well as in questions of securing livelihoods in rural regions.
The activities of the project in India are supervised by the DGRV office in Bonn:
DGRV – Deutscher Genossenschafts- und Raiffeisenverband e. V.
Adenauerallee 121
D-53113 Bonn
+49 228 / 88 61-352
international@dgrv.de
The project “Green Innovation Centres for the Agriculture and Food Sector” is part of the special initiative One World – No Hunger of the BMZ – German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. The project addresses poverty and hunger by establishing green innovation centres for the agriculture and food sector in 15 countries, amongst them India.
GIZ implements the project in selected states of India in collaboration with the expertise support of DGRV as one of the implementing partners. The project region is focused on supporting tomato and potato based value chains in selected districts of the Indian states Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh (only tomato value chains).
The objective of the programme is aimed at leveraging innovations in the agriculture and food sector to increase the incomes of small-scale farming enterprises, increased employment in the agriculture and food sector, and an improved regional food supply.
DGRV has been a partner of the GIZ Green Innovation Centres (GIC) in India for four years until now. DGRV’s role is to contribute experience from the German cooperative movement into the development of Farmer Producer Organisations (FPO) which are formed or strengthened in the course of the value chain promotion approach the GIC are pursuing. In this, DGRV is coordinating closely with its local partner APMAS – (Andhra Pradesh) Mahila Abhivruddhi Society.
For a scaling up of the project interventions/ innovations and for the sustainability of the project, the formation of FPOs is a crucial component of the project and in this direction, the project has been actively organising the farmers at different levels. FPOs are farmers owned business enterprises being governed and managed by farmers themselves. DGRV as implementing partner interacts with the farmers groups for, amongst others, vision building exercises, business planning, setting up of proper self-governance systems and user friendly accounting/ book keeping systems, etc.
APMAS is an NGO with which a successful cooperation with the DGRV exists since 2007. In the East Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, APMAS is the leading professional organisation in the areas of capacity building, strengthening and quality assessment of self-help groups and other local community-based organisations (CBOs) as well as in questions of securing livelihoods in rural regions.
The activities of the SEWoH project in India are supervised by the DGRV office in Bonn:
DGRV – Deutscher Genossenschafts- und Raiffeisenverband e. V.
Adenauerallee 121
D-53113 Bonn
F: +49 228 / 88 61-352
international@dgrv.de
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