Community Resource Persons: Extending Boundaries

Naresh Kumar Nain . January 4, 2015

Undergoing an intense and in-depth training programme, which provides the required exposure and awareness while enhancing confidence, CRPs emerge with the wherewithal to deal with various situations, having developed their articulation and facilitating skills.

Undergoing an intense and in-depth training programme, which provides the required exposure and awareness while enhancing confidence, CRPs emerge with the wherewithal to deal with various situations, having developed their articulation and facilitating skills.

S eema is a high-caste Thakur woman, and this is what she regrets the most. As far as she is concerned, being born to a Thakur family is a curse. It has restricted her freedom to such an extent that she is unable to visit her land or go to fetch water to the nearby well or hand pump. Societal norms are so rigid that she, being from the Thakur community, has had to always remain confined within the four walls of her home and to depend on her husband completely. She has three children and it has been difficult for her and her husband to make a living with the produce from the small piece of land that he has inherited from his parents.

Life has been restrictive for her husband as well. Being from a high caste, he could not work as labour to meet his family’s needs. Seema’s plight was no different from any other poverty-stricken woman of any other community; unlike them, however, she could not contribute to her family by working. When she joined the SHG and dared to step out of her house, she was prepared to bear her husband’s wrath.

She would often come to the PRADAN office along with the other SHG members on some pretext or the other. She would extend herself to other SHG members and actively participate in Cluster meetings. She was selected as a Community Resource Person (CRP) by her Cluster members for her active role as a Cluster leader and for extending herself for the cause of the SHG and the Cluster. She would visit other villages; thanks to her veil, her identity was protected. Her fellow SHG members supported her and were with her when she decided to tell her husband about her first earnings as CRP.

1 Comment

  1. Naresh Nain says:

    A transformation story of Dholpur Rajastham women, who have crossed and broken the patriachal and structured barries in extreme fedual society.

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