Building Sustainable Community Institutions

GVT believes that building sustainable community institutions is the key to development. Once such institutions are equipped with knowledge and skills, they will continue to look after the overall development of the village after withdrawal of the project. Thus Group Development has been a key activity in GVT projects. All the project activities are planned and implemented by the community based Self–Help Groups, which have today become significant community-based institutions.

Self Help Groups (SHG)

The group is usually socially homogeneous group of 15-20 household members of the community (30­50 individuals). Care is taken to ensure that there are no dependency relationships, that politically or economically powerful households do not dominate the group. All the poorest households in the hamlet are included in the groups.

Different StaGes of SHGs

The project’s SHGs pass through three stages:

Initial stage, where the project takes the lead in facilitating communities to form groups

Growth stage, where the communities are involved equally with the project in the implementation of programmes, sharing of benefits, and demonstrating their skills and responsibilities

Maturity stage, where the communities and Jankars take the lead in activities, monitoring and implementation, and gaining access to local government schemes. At this stage, the project starts withdrawing from the villages.

Every member represents her/his household and knows the other members of the group. Every member knows the purpose of the group, as well as the state of the group’s finances.
Leadership responsibilities (including bank signatories) are changed at least twice per year. Leaders elected and selected by the group.

The group has a set of rules, which are discussed and agreed to by the group. Rule breakers are fined. Regular group meetings take place with 90­100% attendance, the majority of whom contribute to group discussion and decision­making. Unanimous support (from group members and other household members) is elicited for key decisions. There is full group participation in key activities (e.g. Soil and Water Conservation. (SWC) planning ­ Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), 'sweeping transects'; species selection for nursery raising).

Once the group has been organised, there is a visible shift towards independence from the Community Organiser (CO). With increasing independence, key decisions (e.g. on leadership, finances, sanctions) are taken without CO’s involvement, as are key activities such as PRAs, CPAs, etc.

Every member makes minimum savings contribution each week or each fortnight. Savings and income build up in a common fund. (savings, fines, donations), which acts as a working capital for its members. The group raises money to pay for the services of jankars, their training costs etc. The group also mobilises specialist skills or services from the government and obtains government scheme funds to meet identified needs

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