Addressing Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment through Distance Education: A Case of Programme for Self Help Group Facilitators by YCMOU

Anant Joshi
School of Education, Yashawantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University, Nashik, MS, India

Madhavi Dharankar
School of Education, Yashawantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University, Nashik, MS, India

Kavita Salunke
School of Education, Yashawantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University, Nashik, MS, India

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     Last modified: October 14, 2006
     Presentation date: 10/31/2006 2:15 PM in NT Portland A
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Abstract
Capacity building is an essential aspect of women’s empowerment. Self Help Group (SHG) movement in country like India has played very important role in capacity building of women. Many NGOs have done good deal of work for SHGs. The facilitators work on behalf of the NGOs for formation and stabilisation of SHGs. The facilitator withdraws from the group once the group is stabilised. This is a very skillful task and the facilitator acquires required knowledge, skills and competence only through the experience. However it was found that there is a need of more than 10 million facilitators only in the State of Maharashtra (a State in India) and getting competent and committed facilitators was the main problem. YCMOU, one of the State Open Universities in India in collaboration with the NGOs developed a certificate programme for SHG facilitators. The endeavour of the development of the programme being collaborative in nature and having the direct relevance to women’s empowerment, was supported by Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU). The systematically conducted pilot testing of the programme indicated that there were significant changes at the knowledge and skill levels of the prospective facilitators. The paper presents the success story of the programme.