Rojiroti team weighs in on 'Eliminating World Poverty'

The UK Department for International Development (DFID) published on 6 July its planned white paper (i.e. policy statement), titled "Eliminating World Poverty: Building our Common Future."

Since Rojiroti is in the thick of the endeavour to alleviate world poverty, team members submitted comments to DFID’s online debate about the white paper while it was in preparation during the first part of this year. Ours was one of some 2,500 separate submissions. We made the following key points, based on our experience (which goes back nine years for some team members):

The Rojiroti Approach depends on very small beginnings, so many self-help groups start with savings of as little as Rs1-2 per week. This is important in ensuring that the initiative stays with the members of the groups and that “elite capture” of the programme and its benefits (which is a real danger of well-funded poverty-alleviation projects) is avoided.

Group facilitators do not need to be professionals. Indeed this is not best use of human resources. Needed skills can be found at village level, among local people, and they can be mobilized at low cost.

Poor people have themselves a huge capacity to change their lives, which is not necessarily dependent on conventional skills such as literacy. “Illiterate” may be an invalid label if it dismisses all aspects of a poor person’s capacity.

The key role of a development agency is to reduce dependency by promoting poor people’s ability to make their own choices other than directing them into choices that others make for them.

We are pleased to see that the second key theme identified by DFID to emerge from the consultation is “Support for the poorest and most excluded – especially women." The white paper states that “Poverty reduction and sustainable development remain the UK’s central development objectives.” Specifically in relation to microfinance, it stresses:

• the role of private investment – by firms, micro-enterprises and households – in creating the incomes and resources that can deliver better education, health, nutrition, water supply. (Ch.2.59)

• that a large proportion of the poor are women (particularly in India where the income gap between genders is currently widening).

• that small loans to poor people can very effectively contribute to poverty alleviation by meeting needs for food, shelter, income and self-employment (Ch 2.59)

The white paper highlights DFID’s investment of £17 million between 2000 and 2009 in India to support NGOs and entrepreneurs to become microfinance institutions (Ch.2.59), and promises to launch a global challenge fund to support the use of mobile telephony and other new technologies to bring financial services to the poor. (Ch. 2.65)

This analysis agrees closely with the project’s experience, and we hope to enable the poor people with whom we work to benefit from development initiatives such as these.

Rojiroti partners with Birla Sun Life

In January 2009, Rojiroti partnered with Birla Sun Life Insurance to provide microinsurance to group members. Birla Sun Life proudly released a press announcement of the partnership.

Inception workshop

The project invited coalition partners and representatives of potential partners and government schemes to join the inception workshop, which it hosted 16th December. The event was featured in newspapers and other media, including the Hindustan Times.

Expo 1 was held adjacent to the inception workshop among CPSL co-ordinators on the knowledge and information issues relating to agriculture and livelihood. 

Rojiroti’s expo events are meant to keep its Village Volunteers up to date on existing agricultural development programmes and welfare schemes. Rojiroti’s Village Volunteers can then take what they learn back to their groups.