Kudumbashree
Kudumbashree is the program for social and economic empowerment of low skilled and low -income rural women of the state of Kerala in India. The program empowers women through the setting up of neighborhood self-help groups which support skill development, savings and credit and enterprise development. The agency set up in 1999 has over two decades of experience with women’s economic empowerment programs. It has 4.5 million members in 2.9 million self-help groups who have over 20,000 enterprises. It is a national resource organization of the Government of India for women’s economic empowerment and has a dedicated training wing that has delivered training in 19 states of India and abroad.
ARWA staff were trained by Kudumbashree in March 2018 as part of the women’s economic empowerment component of the Second Rural Investment Program to implement the SHG model in Azerbaijan. The second round of training in September 2018 trained 35 youth from the regions as Community Business Promoters to support the businesses of WDEGs. All trainings were funded by the Government of India. ARWA continues to receive technical support from the agency to implement and expand the model in Azerbaijan.