On Wednesday, Sep 1, 2021, J&K Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha launched Rural Enterprises Acceleration Programme titled ‘Saath’ for Self Help Group women, “SAATH :Together for a Better Tomorrow.

• Under this initiative of the Jammu and Kashmir Rural Livelihoods Mission (UMEED), the Governor confirmed that the SHG women entrepreneurs will be provided mentoring and handholding through intensive training and capacity building workshops for up-scaling their business ventures.
• The Government has committed to provide access to capital, quality mentorship for re-skilling, new-skilling and help women entrepreneurs from SHG’s reach new markets.5000 women will participate in entrepreneur workshops, 500 women will be provided enterprise up-scaling training and 100 women will be selected for business mentoring under SAATH initiative.
• With initiatives like Saath, Umeed, Mumkin, Hausla, Tejaswini, women are becoming socially and economically independent. This has largely impacted rural women’s lives because they are having a source of income and not have to depend on their husbands. The inclusion of four lakh women in more than 48,000 self-help groups with easy access to capital have revolutionized women entrepreneurship at grassroot level.
• Enable Self Employed Women from SHG’s across J&K to Start and Scale their own Scalable enterprises for value creation & enabling Labour Intensive Employment Opportunities in Rural Areas.

PROGRAM BENEFITS

• Two Weeks – Business Workshop for identifying and evaluating enterprise Opportunities.
• Seven Weeks – Sectoral Training for Scaling up Livelihood activities into Rural Enterprise
• Seven Weeks – Parallel Workshops for SHG Members on
• Innovation & Intellectual Property for Value Creation
• Packaging & Product Design for Competitive Edge
• Enabling Brands for Exponential Business Valuation
• Financial Inclusion & Functional Banking for Rural Women Entrepreneurs
• Ecommerce enablement for nationwide markets
• Ecommerce enablement for nationwide markets
• Cluster based Entrepreneurship Development

•  Six Weeks – Mentoring and Handholding for the selected outstanding women entrepreneurs.
 Support Mechanism through FPOs –
• Technology
• Production
• Branding
• Packaging & Distribution

ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA

  • Any women SHG Members from J&K, between 18 – 50 years of age.
  • Engaged in Self employment activities / Rural enterprises.
  • Women Interested in scaling up the existing livelihood activity into enterprise.

You can register for the program by Clicking here

‘SAATH’ will be a major contributor to the socio-economic upliftment of women in rural and semi-urban areas. Economic independence of women is a key indicator of women empowerment. The goal is to make the women of J&K job creators instead of job seekers, and increase the contribution of women entrepreneurs in UT’s GDP.