As an organization, Jeevika is a platform through which women living in rural poverty can utilize their collective power to strengthen their rights.  Since its inception, Jeevika's constituency has molded and shaped this platform to include access to microcredit, livelihood creation, and arts-based empowerment.  Lori Bonn, founder of Bonnventures , gives insight into Jeevika's evolution, ultimately concluding that not all initiatives need to scale to be effective.

Meeting Jeevika

Imagine the never ending sounds of honking, beeping and bell ringing of chaotic traffic, buses, taxis, rickshaws, bicycles hurling themselves around every corner and through the masses of people and dogs and sacred cows navigating their way across and down alley ways, this is Kolkata.  The air is thick with smog and the smell of a pulsating city, a duality of the old and new India.  The best time to walk the city is early morning to see fathers walking their children to school, women in saris with beautiful hues of pinks, greens, oranges and yellows, men getting shaves at open air barbershop corners, food stalls of vegetables, lassi “the favorite yogurt drink of India”, stands of peeled and cubed papayas, shop keepers setting up their wares while the poorest of the poor bathe in the city water cisterns.

On our second day, we climbed aboard our mini bus and headed about an hour south of Kolkata proper, arriving at the offices of Jeevika Development Society, a community based NGO committed to working towards increasing the rights of women in West Bengal, India.  Jeevika means “livelihood” in Sanskrit.  We were introduced to the Founder, Raja Menon and Donlon Ganguly, Associate Director of the organization and the staff of all women who proudly described their roles in the organization.   For over a decade, Jeevika has been working with communities of marginalized women throughout 37 villages and empowering the lives of over 5000 women living in the mostly rural agricultural population.

We sipped our tea and crackers, and listened to an impassioned Raja give his view about the shortcomings of microfinance alone and its lack of ability to lift women out of poverty.  He used the metaphor of a woman treading water and just keeping her head just above the water line, still alive, kicking but going nowhere.  Jeevika was founded as a grassroots women’s rights NGO, approaching microfinance through a gender and empowerment lens with the goal to establish a sustainable and women-run banking system that achieves both social and economic empowerment.  The Jeevika microfinance model is unique in that credit systems are used specifically as a platform to discuss all issues affecting the lives of the women in the rural villages.  Everything from domestic violence and rape to labor market discrimination and participation in the local rural self-governing circles called panchayats.  In 2008, with Jeevika’s help, Swayamsampurna, a federation of over 400 women’s self-help groups (WSHGs) was formed as a financial institution run by rural women to provide micro-loans for launching small businesses. 

Not a microfinance institution

It is clear that Jeevika is taking a stand to focus first on the rights of women and choosing the microfinance schemes as a secondary mission.  Jeevika is not a microfinance institution which makes it difficult for them to get funding for their projects, and yet they are pushing forward with their mission as an NGO promoting livelihood opportunities by collaborating with other organizations to provide trainings for their Income Generation Programs (IGPS) which have focused on embroidery, tailoring, and soft toys catering to fair trade organizations.  Also, they have embarked on computer and entrepreneurial skills training in the hopes of creating new computer-based businesses for the women in the villages.  Jeevika’s most recent initiative has been around an agricultural IGP called System of Rice Intensification (SRI) agriculture that utilizes environmental green practices and enables economic self-sufficiency and food security for the rural community.    

I have always been concerned with the teetering balance of microfinance institutions to lend money while relying on other NGOs to provide the financial literacy and business training to women entrepreneurs.  Jeevika has a framework with extensive possibilities requiring more strategic guidance on how to navigate the marriage of microfinance with empowerment trainings in gender equality rights and access to entrepreneurial skills, training, and credit at the same time.  They are trying to innovate the platform with an emphasis on the social rate of return outcome not the market rate of return of microfinance.

Visiting the front lines of microfinance

We were given the opportunity to visit one of the rural villages and participate in a local village micro-credit self-help group meeting with Swayamsampurna Board Members.  Our transportation was an adventuresome ride in an open air motorized rickshaw, giving us an up close view of the harrowing traffic on the main road, but an intimate view of life in the village as we rode down the cobbled narrow roads.  The vignettes of life revealed a community of religious diversity, living on a river of verdant green because the agricultural land does not have proper irrigation the result is still water in many places along the banks of the village.  We saw school children in uniforms and kids of school age playing in the streets or washing clothes or bathing in the river and ponds.  It was a relief to be out of the big city and to enjoy the rhythm of the village. 

Arriving at one of the houses, we were greeted by the Chairman of the Board of Directors.  Removing our shoes, we sat outside on the porch, joining the association of this local self-help group of approximately 15 women.  Graciously, they allowed us to watch as they discussed issues in the village while paying back their loans to the designated treasurer.  She kept a handwritten log and collected each individual’s stack of bills.  In the midst of this, we listened and learned while the women shared their stories of what they hope to achieve with their loans and the power of their unity as a group.  We asked questions regarding their husband’s feelings about their loans and businesses, bill paying in the family and how money was spent and whether they felt their lives were better since joining the self help organization.  Our questions helped to break the ice, particularly when we said we had the same issues with our husbands in talking about money and work.  Unanimously, they all agreed the most important reason for joining was to be with the other women and share their stories and lives with one another.  The ladies of the club felt their decision making power had increased within their family, community and most importantly over their own lives through the empowerment methods provided by Jeevika.  The same gender issues the women face in the rural village are the same for women globally, the fight for gender equity and a voice. 

Whether Jeevika has the means to scale the program based on their strategic mission is of some concern but the outcome we shared gives credence to the notion that not everything needs to scale to be effective.  The best part of this day’s journey was to experience and share in the global exchange of conversation and ideas in this rural village and the women who so graciously allowed us to join their circle.