Nirnaya sees the need for networking with corporates and goverment agencies. The corporates are the movers and shakers for any political party to gain and retain power - run the government. They are also the critical elements in promoting the political will for advancing women's rights agenda. We involve individual women in positions of power within the government or corporate sector into our work as board, who in turn help in some collaborations. The risk in our involving with the government per se, is that we can sometimes be promoting initiatives that threaten the sustainability of women's empowerment and leave this collaboration to our grantees.Impressed by our outreach to remotely placed grassroots women, after attending our formation day celebrations in 2006, the Hyderabad based General Manager - Corporates of State Bank of India, invited Nirnaya to apply for a loan of Rs.10,00,000 for onward lending to the community based women's groups she is linked to. The lending was to dalit and Muslim women in a district of Andhra Pradesh, covering 10 groupswith a celing of Rs.10,000 for one woman, the interest was borrower friendly and the success was such that the in the next year the same women's groups were awarded loans to the tune of Rs1,00,000 by other banks in that district. Our grantee WNGO which works in the district was able to address a wide range of women's issues from then onwards.
Indira Jena, Executive Director
Hyderabad, India
Women's Funding Network member since 2002
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