Capacitating CSOs & Empowering Women & Girls through Social Entrepreneurship

The Girl Power project, funded by the European Union, is being implemented by the All India Institute of Local Self-Government along with its project partners- MGIRI, SGF and MSS. The project aims to strengthen the capacity of civil society organizations for empowerment of women, and build their role as self- regulating agents for social change and executing actions, which will bring positive developments into the lives of women in the state of Jharkhand.

Proceedings with Digital Transformation

Most of the project activities which can be implemented digitally, are being taken online. In person formal meetings have now been taken over by online meetings, like the Girl Power CSO-Partner meetings or the CSO-AG meetings. Surveys are now being conducted through mobile phones and emails, like the CSO Skill Gap Analysis Survey. Keeping up with the Project objectives, networking and partnership building activities were the prime focus of the month of May, focusing on Girl Power Project networking and CSO support activities. The project aims to build sustainable networks, to promote meaningful and structured participation in programming and policy processes. It also aims at building stronger institutional arrangements and accountability within the project and to build relationships with stakeholders. Following are the brief of activities conducted in May:

Network Building

This project aims to create a network of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and women entrepreneurs, which will act as a support mechanism base for fostering rights and support to women in the state of Jharkhand. There are several likeminded programs and schemes going on from government of Jharkhand, which will help us to learn and implement the tools used in the project, and this will only be possible through active networking with government organizations, CSOs, SHGs and other stakeholders. There is an effort to develop strategies to build effectiveliaising with respective departments of government to fulfill the broader network building and partnerships approach imbibed in the objects of the Project.

Network Expansion
The Gender Network for Social Entrepreneurship Jharkhand (GNSE-J) has been established to promote multi-stakeholder participation in the state of Jharkhand. This network will also act as an overall advisory network to share best practices, knowledge sharing and problem-solving. It will support the Best Practice Forums. The GNSE-J is made up of an Advisory Committee including selected officials from State government, elected legislators, CSOs, Women Entrepreneurs, academia and women and girls key stakeholders from Jharkhand. As a step further towards network building efforts are being taken to associate with various government officials from the state government departments like Women and Child Development, and Social Justice and Welfare. In order to add strength and expand the network of CSO-AG and GNSE-J, official communications have been established through e-mails and e-meetings with private sector experts, as with CSOs for GNSE-J membership and with state level organizations too, for the extensive support for this project.

CSO Support

CSO support is the fundamental part of this entire project. Therefore keeping this idea alive there was an initial brainstorming cum strategy building meeting within the Girl Power project team regarding how the CSOs’ knowledge resource can be utilized and how they should be motivated as a facilitator organization for this project. The output of the team discussion was to organize a web CSO meet and supporting activities, the details of which are as follows-

CSO Meet with Implementing Partners
An important activity was to conduct a meeting with the CSOs, via online mode on 25th of May, 2020, as an effort towards the larger network building. The meeting was conducted with the objective to formally introduce all the selected 20 CSOs to the Project Partners (MGIRI, SGF and MSS) and also to answer several queries of the CSOs regarding project details and its linkage to provide them better understanding on the Girl Power Project. The focal point of the discussion was how the CSOs can get the benefit from the support of the implementing partners and their networks and accordingly capacitate themselves through this process. Also various training programs, modules, technical supports, which will be provided by AIILSG and implementing partnerswasdiscussed in the meeting.

MOU with Partners
The purpose of this MOU is to facilitate coordination between the Participant CSOs and the implementing organization, to create a formal agreement for carrying out the project objectives and activities. This MOU signing is a mutual agreement, which will help to coordinate project activities. The MOU aims at building agreed terms, conditions and guidelines which all CSOs will follow as a direction for the Girl Power Project. This MOU describes the Background of the project, scope of work, areas of cooperation, consultation, publicity & confidentiality, duration, amendment, termination & other matters.

CSO Surve & Data Collection
This activity was aimed on understanding gaps, present status, and future prospects for women in the social entrepreneurial space in Jharkhand. For this purpose, the project has undertaken desk research to seek and analyze the appropriate market entry points in social entrepreneurship.
Adding knowledge to the existing set of information base is a major rationale of any project. Therefore considering this idea of a research study, an onlinebased CSO Survey&data collectionhas been initiated in the first round with 20 selected CSOs. In second round the same survey was conducted with 26 other CSOs, the objective of which was to understand the skill gaps and skill mapping of the CSOs, current challenges in the market/local areas, identification of training needs compliance, participation of local level SHGs in the entire process, etc. The survey also focused on how and what products are profitable across several districts and a demand centric approach both at local level and state level. The survey is currently at data analysis stage and shortly it will show the findings which will provide help and direction in further understanding of the demands and needs of the CSOs and their capacity building which can be met through the help of the Girl Power project.

Preparation of Training Modules and Curriculum
The Capacity Building activity for training of the CSOs aims to train the 20 selected CSOs/Self help groups to become trainers themselves, who will in turn train other CSOs, by enabling and imparting them training and skill building exercises. These CSOs will essentially be working in the field of enhancing and empowering women in social entrepreneurship. These trainings will be conducted based on the topics and themes identified through the CSO survey after which the respective training curriculum will be developed. The CSOs will be trained over a period of 7 days on the various topics and demonstrations kits will also be distributed to each of the CSOs at the end of the training program. Based on the above, the selected 20 CSOs will be directed to train 80 other CSOs/Self-help Groups. An initial roadmap has also been identified from various online resources and research, for building the training modules and curriculum for the capacity building of the CSOs. Major inputs have also been taken from CSO survey& data collection in this work.

Delineation of Partner’s Responsibilities for Market Connect
The brief objective of the Market Connect is to provide a market platform to potential women entrepreneurs in the project areas. This will connect them with ready marketplace for their business growth and expansion. This attempt will also provide women entrepreneurs with a focused direction, where they can get direct access of their goods, products and services for better profitability. Considering the goals and objectives of Market Connect, the Market Connect Program initial assignments has been assigned to the Market Connect Team.The expected outcome from this activity is to see strong and empowered clusters of women entrepreneurs who can develop better bargaining power &equality through market access and market connect platform for their ventures. This financial independence will install self confidence in them to stand against the age old traditional patriarchal set up. This effort aimed at bringing a social change will develop a new and positive layer of social structure, where these marginalized women will see themselves as the leaders of tomorrow.

Designing of Collaterals
To promote our project goals, objectives and processes, and to ensure the reach of project, several project collaterals have been designed like the Girl Power project Letterhead,Visiting Cards, Banners and Standees, T-shirt, Coffee Mug, and posters.This is an IEC promotional activity under Girl Power Project and will help the project to expand to various stakeholders and connect them within the broader objective of network building within the projects so that the project can grow and expand its reach to several other women and CSOs.

Expanding the Network through Social Media
To make the most effective use of social media with limited time and effort, a comprehensive media outreach strategy has been framed through various social media platforms. To keep the entire idea informed and for knowledge outreach with officials and stakeholders through the social mediaplatforms, social pages are nowlive for Girl Power Project digital network building. Social Media Platform is for anyone and for everyone, this project can help to reach to the masses and promote efforts and methodologies to the world to make the society a better place for potential women entrepreneurs. Additionally this will build a habit of digital sharing of success stories among the CSOs and women entrepreneurs.
The Girl Power Project aims at facilitating women entrepreneurships in society withthe enhancementin skill set of CSOs & Women entrepreneurs throughthe digitalsharing platform. The project aims at improving employability and skill up-gradation of CSOs and women groups.
In the due course of implementation of the project activities,the project will make efforts to utilize the digitization process and hence will understand how fruitful and knowledge oriented it could be to fulfill our goals and expectations in the project. The network building and CSO support activities are aimed to capacitate the CSOs and expand their larger network. Similarly Market Connect is expected to provide the female entrepreneurs with direct and digital platform for gaining access to the market and become self-independent. Finally, the Girl Power Project aims to bring about an overall improvement in the economic conditions of the women in Jharkhand, leading to the overall objectives of socio-economic development at state and national levels.