SHG Activities

SELF HELP GROUPS

IVDP SELF HELP GROUPS

A Self Help Group is an organisation of homogeneous women with 12 to 20 members between the age group of 18 to 55 years, uniting together with the sole aim of strengthening themselves in attaining socio economic development, betterment in life.

THE STEERING WHEEL OF IVDP SHGS

ANNUAL CREDIT PLAN

Every year IVDP joins hands with commercial banks and draft a credit plan for lending loans to its SHG members. During these meetings the loan lending amount to SHGs has been fixed. The higher officials and Branch managers of IVDP’s partner banks like, Indian Bank, Pallavan Grama Bank and Bank of India will come to IVDP and fix the loan amount to be given to SHGs in that financial year.

LOANS

The savings and credit are the major components of any SHGs in India. The credit given to the poor rural women by the financial institutions do bring in significant changes in their lives.Invariably they need financial support for all their developmental activities. Irrespective of their livelihood jobs, every member avails either one or more loans and make use of the money for their development activities like small business, agricultural, house construction, educational expenses, marriage expenses etc.

IVDP is committed to bring about women empowerment through women SHGs by means of facilitating various loans at a reasonable rate of interest.

Types of loans availed by IVDP SHG members:

1. Sangha loan (from the savings) at the reasonable interest rate fixed by the groups.
2. Sangha Special Loan
3. IVDP loan (Interest 12%)
4. Bank loan : Here the bank loans are sanctioned only to the group accounts. Naturally all members become equally responsible for the loan amount sanctioned. If a member fails to repay the loan, all other remaining members should take the responsibility of repayment.

Apart from the sangha loans, the groups have easy access to get either IVDP loan or bank loan. IVDP SHGs are grouped under clusters for training, loan appraisal and so many other purposes.

RATE OF INTEREST FOR SHG BANK LOANS

Money lending with huge interest rate exploits poor people in the villages. But IVDP offers the loans to its SHG members with same rate of interest which commercial bank offers for its loans.

GROUP RESERVE FUND

Group Reserve Fund is nothing but the exclusive savings of the IVDP SHG. Every IVDP SHG has to deposit a amount ranging from Rs. 25,000/- to Rs. 1,50,000/- in their SHG account, depending upon the age of the group. It increases the credibility of the SHG while getting the bank loan.

CAPACITY BUILDING TRAINING FOR SHGs

Any community organization has to build their capacity for its professional functioning. Then only they can deliver its services effectively and efficiently. Training and capacity building exercises are an ongoing process which requires continues training and exposure programmes at all levels. In this process the SHGs will acquire knowledge, skills and various techniques which are useful for their better functioning.

AUDIT & ACCOUNTABILITY

Consolidating the income, expenditure and accounting of financial transactions of the SHGs for a particular period of time (April to March) are audited by a group of IVDP staff.

Importance of Audit

1. Irregular cash transaction or misappropriation ,if any, found out and suitable action is taken to resolve the problems.
2. Wrong entries, missing entries, in income and expenditure / transaction are found out and suitable action is taken.
3. Audit enables and qualifies groups to avail various loans.
4. Audit helps the groups to legaly establish their sound financial credentials.
5. Grading the SHGs and animators, based on the performance in credit linkage activities and maintance of books and records.

Kinds of Audit

1. Internal Audit
2. External Audit
3. Group Grading
4. Animators Grading

Internal audit and it’s special features

The accounts of SHGs belonging to one cluster level federations will be verified by the full time field supervisors of another CLF (Cluster Level Federation).
Internal Audit will be conducted once in every three months. All the records in connection with the group transactions and bank statements will be verified in the audit. The auditing is also to instruct the groups to clear their dues in the bank, if any.

External audit and it’s special features

A group of experts in the IVDP head office, under the guidance and supervision of an external auditor who verifies income, expenditure and all transactions of the groups at the end of every financial year and give grading to groups. Producing bank statement, getting no dues certificate from the bank, evaluation and grading, rectification of errors and arriving a detailed balance sheet are the special features of the external audit. First the team will audit the groups manually to cross checked it the entries in software.

Finally the audit statement will be prepared and sent to chartered accountant for his final approval.

DIVIDEND : SHARED INTEREST

The Self Help Group members are rotating their savings among the members with a nominal interest. First time, the accumulated interest over the period of five years is shared among themselves, on completion of fifth year, begin sharing of accumulated interest among them every two years after deducting the group’s expenses. This is known as dividend. This creates a faith over the group activities and motivates them to save more money through their SHG.

EMPOWERING WOMEN THROUGH TECHNOLOGY

The digitalization of SHGs accounts and operations are very well adopted by the members and received a positive response. Now the group members are viewing all their transactions in the tab and operating it through the finger print device.

Methodology

• All SHG members’ finger prints are collected and stored in IVDP server.
• All the loan repayments are entered in front of Members and acknowledged by the member.
• Collections are entered in the TAB and linked to the IVDP MIS portal (Management Information System) and Cluster Desktop.
• The SHG’s transactions and activities are monitored from the Head office.
• SMS alerts are sent to group member’s mobile.

Advantages

• SHG member’s attendance are monitored.
• Individual member’s transactions like – savings, loan outstanding, over dues and group status can be monitored then and there.
• Special loans can be avail without visit to HO.
• The credibility of the SHGs will increase and banks will get more confidence on group’s functioning.
• The coordination between the groups and IVDP HO will be strengthened.
• We have completed the digitalization process for 9,794 SHGs consisting of 1,72,927 members