The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : SHG plans to set up small scale unit

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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

SHG plans to set up small scale unit

Staff Reporter

Aims at producing cheaper sanitary napkins for the benefit of rural women

– Photo: N. Bashkaran.

Helping them grow: Kulandei Francis, Director of IVDP, an NGO, handing over model question and answer books to the Chief Educational Officer M. Baskaran (left) at Krishnagiri Government Boys Higher Secondary School on Wednesday.

KRISHNAGIRI: Integrated Village Development Programme (IVDP), an NGO based in Krishnagiri is vying to set up a small-scale unit to produce sanitary napkins, in collaboration with Bella Premier, a Poland based firm.

Awareness

Director of IVDP Kulendei Francis told The Hindu that keeping in mind the need to create awareness about the personal hygiene among women, they had purchased sanitary napkin packets from a Poland based firm which has its manufacturing facility in Dindigul in Tamil Nadu for Rs. 1 crore and distributed them to women at a price 25 per cent lesser than the market price.

“To further reduce the cost of the napkins, IVDP is planning to set up a small-scale plant in collaboration with the Poland based firm,” he said and added that “ there is an idea of arranging automatic napkin vending machines in all the government and aided schools in Krishnagiri and Dharmapuri districts.”

He stressed that 150 members of women SHGs had died due to uterus cancer. Keeping this in mind, IVDP is propagating the use of sanitary napkins and spreading awareness about menstrual hygiene among rural women and girls.

The main priorities of IVDP are to provide clean and protected drinking water to the downtrodden, construction of toilets under the total sanitation programme and creating awareness about menstrual hygiene.

He said, the non-profit organisation was started in the year 1979 with a vision of transforming the lives of the poor by reducing their sufferings.

It operates in Krishnagiri, Dharmapuri and Vellore districts.

Migration

To arrest the migration of villagers to urban and semi-urban areas in search of jobs because of shortage of rainfall in Denkankottai area, IVDP took steps to construct 92 major check dams and 239 minor check dams across the waterways covering 60 villages, benefiting about 60,000 people.

7000 SHGs by March

As of now, there were 6700 women SHGs under the umbrella of IVDP, it figure would reach 7000 by March this year. Before forming a group IVDP verifies the antecedents of members.

All SHGs were being motivated through programmes and training was being imparted for accounts maintenance, group enhancement, and other activities by a group of trainers.

The group’s activities were continuously being monitored by a superviser for 25 SHGs and for every 250 SHGs a federation was in place.

The group has 28 branch offices besides its head office in Krishnagiri.

Members of the SHGs were engaged in milk production and making nippad (thattai) generate income.

12000 toilets in villages

IVDP had arranged bank loans for the construction of 12000 toilets through a loan of Rs. 10,000 each for villagers. Nevertheless, DRDA was had not released the government subsidy of Rs. 2200 per toilet citing various unconvincing reasons like not using the official toilet basins in the toilets.

This year IVDP arranged loans from banks for constructing 5000 toilets.

It had constructed 5000 toilets last year and 2,000 toilets the year before that.

Guides

In addition to this, IVDP started giving `Vetri Un Kaiyil’ guides for all subjects to SSLC and Plus 2 students of government and aided high and higher secondary schools from last year at a cost of Rs. 10 lakhs.

This had resulted 10 per cent increase in pass percentage of students, Mr. Francis said.

As many as 33,000 question-answer guides were distributed to 10th and plus 2 students on Wednesday at a function held at Krishnagiri Government Boys Higher Secondary School.

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