Swabhiman Project

Partner: Rang De

Problems faced by Farmers

Through community interactions by our partner organization, we learned that: 

1. People were struggling to sustain their livelihoods.
2. They lacked marketability and transportation for their produce, without which they remained at the mercy of middlemen.
3. The need to optimize crop production through organic practices, in the interests of preserving the soil and surrounding environment. 

SIF Initiative

With the help of our partner Rang De, SIF plans to set up a fully-fledged Swabhimaan Center in Sittlingi Organic Farmers Association to create a self-sustaining model for credit in the community. We plan to do this through customized financial literacy that focuses on bringing about long term behavior change.

Objectives

The objectives of the Swabhimaan centre are as follows: 

• To Provide customized financial literacy training for the beneficiaries 
• Implement behavior change nudges to help communities develop healthy financial habits 
• Create a digital platform for inter lending in the community 

Financial Literacy Training- Financial Literacy Training at Swabhimaan is not one off but continuous and ongoing. The training is divided into several levels and modules. In the last couple of years, Rang De has created a rich repository of audio visual content that will be used for the training. Community members can sign up to attend as many training sessions as possible and undergo a mandatory assessment before going to the next level. 

Habit formation through Behavior Change nudges- We believe the impact of a financial literacy training program can only be measured by the behavior change it brings about. We have therefore introduced several nudges in the life cycle of a member’s journey with Swabhimaan to establish healthy financial habits. 

Inter lending through Rang De’s digital platform- We uncovered a unique use case in SOFA. The early adopters of organic farming are now reaping the benefits and have done well. While the recent adopters still need access to credit. Over a period of time, we expect to create a self-sustaining credit model for the community. 

The money from the community stays within the community. It also provides the beneficiary an ability to have a credit score for the first time which is their first step towards financial inclusion. 

Timelines 

We expect to roll out the project in 3 phases as given below: 

Phase 1: Financial Literacy training and behavior change. The financial literacy training will continue beyond the phase 1 of the project. 

Phase 2: Pilot loans for the communities who have completed their financial literacy training and assessment. 

Phase 3: Community lending through Rang De’s digital platform RangDe.in

Our activities went on hold due to the lock-down as a result of Covid-19 pandemic. We will provide more updates once the normal works resumes on this project. 

Our Progress

1. We have begun the operations of the Swabhimaan program. We started the Swabhiman center near Sittilingi, Tamilnadu, in June this year with the help of Sittilingi Organic Farming Association(SOFA).
2. We have hired a Swabhimaan Mitra who takes care of the day to day operations of the centre. He conducts outreach, schedules the sessions and conducts the training of the community members. 
3. We have been able to train a total of 53 community members between August October. 
4. We have also hired a new team member who works on the customization of the financial literacy content and for designing the behavioural change interventions. 
5. We have been able to conduct a few assessments, however, we have experienced a few technical difficulties and are currently working on addressing those issues. 

Road ahead

For the next few months, we will be working with the Swabhimaan Mitra to expand on the number of training and assessments being conducted. We will also be working on creating new content based on the needs of the community. 

We will be designing behaviour change interventions for the communities to ensure that the financial literacy doesn’t stay limited to the training modules but brings about a sustained behavioural change in how the communities perceive financial management.

Lastly, we will also work on making tech advancements to make the entire training and assessment process easy and seamless. As a short term solution to the challenges that we are currently having, we are looking at solving all the glitches that we are currently experiencing. Post this, we will also look at a long term goal of making the content and the assessments more mobile and accessible to the community members on their personal smart or feature phones.