While working with the handloom weavers in eastern UP, particularly those who were into making high volume – low margin products, in the mid-1990s, GDS witnessed the collapse of the sector, creating severe livelihoods crises for the households who solely depended on this activity. GDS realized that it would have to think of other strategies to provide support to these households; and, thus, emerged, what, later on became as an important pillar of GDS’s programmatic approach – promotion of community based microfinance, through women’s self-help groups (SHGs) and federations. Beginning from 1996, in Maghar (then in the Basti District, and later, in Sant Kabir Nagar District of Eastern UP), this intervention expanded swiftly into the villages of the districts Sant Kabir Nagar, Gorakhpur and Basti.
Further to the community microfinance approach, conforming to its initial strategy of promoting ‘alternative’ nonfarm livelihoods, GDS experimented with the strategy of promoting women’s group based microenterprises promotion along with rural entrepreneurship promotion. By the end 1990s, GDS had promoted 14 such microenterprises around activities like garment stitching, bag-making, bakery and confectionery.
However, GDS soon realized that organizing group based enterprises was humongous task, involving a lot of resources and relatively very low outreach, along with high risks of failure. This realization caused a momentous shift in GDS’s strategic thinking. It now decided to focus on existing rural livelihoods (and not only on the ‘alternative’ livelihoods) wherein it could impact a large number of households with relatively much lower per capita investment. Thus began GDS’s involvement with various farm-based (agriculture as well as livestock-based) development approaches, that, in the course of time, have emerged as one of the most important programmatic approaches (for details, see section 4 below).
Another critical evolution in GDS’s approach that happened around this time was incorporation of the theme of social empowerment of women into its programmes, on the advise of a donor partner. The strategies adopted for this included undertaking a ‘Rights-Based-Education’ (RBE) programme for women (focusing on building basic literacy and numeracy skills among women and through this pathway, sensitizing them on their basic rights and entitlements within the household and the community), and promotion of women’s leadership and large (cluster and district-levels) institutions of women to wage fight against atrocities towards them.
At GDS’s Sant Kabir Nagar location alone, some 6000 women participated in the year long RBE process by 2007-08. This, along with creation of a strong women’s institutional base (1400 SHGs involving over 16,000 women; 14 cluster level and one tertiary level federations created deep impact on the status of women at this location. During 2006-08, the RBE approach was also successfully implemented at GDS’s Lalitpur location in Southern UP with 1400 women. The RBE approach still continues as an integral part of GDS’s intervention and presently is being implemented with approximately 1600 women from 50 villages in Districts Maharajganj, Balrampur and Shravasti of Eastern UP. The women’s institutions promotion, on the other hand has also emerged as a key strategic approach for GDS and has been applied at most of GDS’s programme locations [Maharajganj: 250 SHGs and one federation; Lalitpur: 190 SHGs with two cluster level federations; Jawaja (Ajmer, Rajasthan): 400 SHGs and two federations; and 70 SHGs in 25 villages located in the Gandak River Basin in West Champaran and Kushinagar Districts, on the UP-Bihar border].