Swayam Shikshan Prayog

Swayam Shikshan Prayog SSP is learning non-profit that repositions grassroots women as key stakeholders by building their capacities as farmers, entrepreneurs and decision makers to drive locally led development. This Prize, we believe, can advance our transformative vision and holistic approach with untied funds to elevate marginalized rural women from climate threatened geographies firstly to revive agriculture as the oxygen that women and families need to enhance their nutrition, secondly women led nature based livelihoods and thirdly build women’s leadership and advocacy to improve their social and economic resilience and protect natural resources. The Prize can accelerate organised rural women’s collectives to gain access to productive assets, land rights and get counted as social & economic contributors so they catapult from the margin to mainstream of development. We aim to scale up women led ecosystems  to incubate new farmers and entrepreneurs by promoting interdependent profitable women led economic collectives and social enterprises in value chains using technology, digital market platforms and connecting women to govt and market systems. 

Prema started 30 years ago, as a restless researcher and soon moved from academia to work directly with rural women. She took a leap of faith, after a major earthquake to work on a mass scale reconstruction project from which SSP was born and named as Swayam: Self-Empowerment Shikshan: Education, Prayog: experiment & innovation. This core mission has remained unchanged, as SSP impacts 200,000 women, 5.5 million people across 7 climate-threatened states in India. Women’s earnings have tripled and they are recognized as decision makers locally with better health, nutrition and basic services.

Under her leadership, repeated crises were viewed as an opportunity to empower women and build resilience. In SSP’s journey, we were often faced challenges affecting lives and livelihoods. It was a golden rule that listened to women and they took on global problems like nutrition and found local solutions. I affirmed my belief that women’s true potential could be realized as change makers if they were recognized and resourced.

Prema is Schwab Social Entrepreneur WEF 2019, UNDP Equator Prize 2017, UNFCCC Lighthouse Award (2016), Ashoka, Synergos Fellow. As Co-founder, Advisor Huairou Commission a Global Coalition, she roots for grassroots women’s leadership to build climate leadership.

Rural women are seldom considered as economic contributors, farmers or entrepreneurs in India though they hold knowledge and wisdom in agriculture, nutrition, health, water and sanitation. Aligned with global trends[1], 79% of Indian rural women are engaged in agriculture but only 13% of farmland is owned by them, depriving them of farmer status. Adverse social norms, lack of assets, limited employment opportunities and entrepreneurial avenues, hinder women’s economic participation. This affects them individually, and limits their families’ and local communities’ opportunities.

Many factors contribute: rural women with low levels of functional education struggle to navigate digitally connected systems for accessing social security entitlements, markets and finance, resulting in low workforce participation[2] (19.2%). Risk averse investors reflect patriarchal attitudes of traditional society, reducing growth. Climate change, low access to productive resources, and unpaid domestic work (82.1%[3]) further increases the stress on women to sustain families, as the subsistence economy does not allow them alternate livelihoods.    

[1] FAO report-Women in Agriculture, closing the gender gap for development 2010-2011

[2] Government of India National Statistical Office - Time Use Survey 2019

[3] Government of India National Statistical Office - Time Use Survey 2019

The innovative solution is the co-creation of a future ready sustainable ecosystem creates business incubators for nature-based enterprises run by women’s economic groups It integrates key elements -firstly promoting rural women as agriculture decision makers and entrepreneurs, secondly leading pre-production to sales across value chain enterprises and interacting with markets and government systems,

Thirdly, women lead and manage the local ecosystems as planners and mentors.

Usually implemented in silos, the process innovation will be integrated, co-created with women entrepreneurs and scaled up using digital interventions. SSP’s proven and scalable initiative is driven by experienced business leaders who take on roles as the planners and teachers of this program cycle and enabling access to seed loans, digital technologies, peer networks, mentorship and linkages to finance and markets.

At a time when India’s female workforce participation is lowest in the world at 27% we are showing a path to a disruptive counter-trend – a women-led economic growth model that has succeeded in remote climate affected areas -where banks are recalcitrant and there are no investors to hedge big bets on women entrepreneurs. 

Our impact on humanity is delivered through locally embedded, women-led, rural entrepreneurial ventures. Since 2016, we have transformed 45,000 rural women as entrepreneurs who now earn USD 1600 to 4000 per annum. Our scaled models testify when we mainstream economic engagements of women, then bigger problems are solved, communities flourish, and intergenerational development happens. Over the last two decades we have elevated more than 200,000 marginalized women from climate threatened geographies as entrepreneurs, decision-makers and sector experts. Today they are solving community problems in WASH, Agriculture, Energy, Health and Nutrition and providing climate-positive solutions. For example, through our Climate Resilient Farming program 60,000 women have been transformed from agri-labourers to decision-makers in agri-business value chains – improving livelihoods, food and nutrition security, and water availability for their families and communities. Despite COVID, in 2020 alone we have been able to set up four agri business value chains for vegetables, milk, pluses and organic farm inputs across 60 villages forming more than 100 farmer groups.

Women empowerment and enhancing their leadership  is at the core of our impact matrix and our scaled approach to deliver larger impacts. Our biggest impact on humanity thus is creating women leaders and women led grassroots institutions who in turn create sustainable value locally in their communities.