The Indo-Mali project has enabled us to successfully replicate the Dholpur model of institution-building for livelihoods advancement in Logo Kayes, Mali.
In 2016, cross-organizational stakeholders from Camide and Virtue Ventures visited Manjari Foundation in India to study our model of women’s empowerment and rural economic development. Impressed by the on-ground impact they witnessed, Camide invited Manjari Foundation to partner with them to execute Yeredme - a groundbreaking pilot for women's empowerment.
The objective was to see how Manjari's model for social transformation could be applied to solve challenges in the West African context.
During the visit, the Mali team experienced India’s powerful, peer-driven, Self-Help Group (SHG) ecosystem and witnessed how the Manjari team integrated the SHG functionality into its livelihood development agenda, thereby creating its own unique SHG model.
The Camide team shared its willingness to replicate the same model in the Kayes region of Mali. A team from Manjari Foundation, it was decided, would visit Mali to understand the context and explore the opportunity for partnership.
A year later, the Manjari team, comprising technical staff and SHG members, arrived in rural Mali.
Thus, 2017 marked the beginning of a true south-south collaboration, whereby the Indian women’s SHG model was being adapted to the Malian context and implemented through a powerful, experiential, peer-learning, and peer role-modeling methodology.
To our knowledge, this is a unique initiative, and no similar program had ever been executed in West Africa.
Our Testimonials
'Manjari’ literally translates to “seed of Tulsi”, a sacred Indian plant. When women mobilise themselves to form institutions, they are empowered to sow their own ‘seeds of change’.
"Development of Corporate Citizenship (DoCC), the social internship program of SPJIMR has been collaborating with Manjari Foundation since 2015. This has been fruitful relationship for us. I want to emphasise the four following themes. First the internships give our students a different idea of leadership which also gives them a sense of requirements for the future and adds to the ethics of sociological content. The participants acquire a notion of innovation- both social and technical which gives them a systemic view of the society. Such an empirical location gives them both a sense of limits and possibilities of what they can do. Environmental consciousness and gender sensitivity constitute two critical parts of social responsibility as we define it today. The participants of the internship understand what these key concepts mean in everyday sense. Internship at Manjari adds to their imagination in this direction. We value this relationship."
"Our collaboration with Manjari has allowed us to better understand the approach of solidarity groups and concretely towards the empowerment of women in the commune of Logo.The participation of Indian PRCs has been beneficial because the women have appropriated easily by seeing that they are rural women Indian women who share their experiences with them. The Camide team was formed by the professionals of Manjari with enthusiasm and professionalism and is able to reproduce most of the activities. This period of collaboration opens up prospects for our two structures to replicate the model in Mali and Africa. We again thank Manjari for all the efforts made for Camide and particularly the Director Sanjay Kumar. We were able to reach more than 2,500 women and more than 180 million CFA francs of credit granted four test henhouses substantial support for the winter and market gardening campaign in terms of results thank you."
"Without larger vision and dedication of the team of MF and its leadership, both vertical and horizontal growth would have never been possible to pick up at this level in this short history of its evolution. Since I have been associated with the Sakhi project of MF funded by Hindustan Zinc for the last 2 years, the happiness and confidence seen in their faces of hundreds of women in the villages proves its vitality. I have also witnessed the UN-women funded second chance education project (SCE) being implemented in 3 districts under the guidance of PRADAN is a much worthy to reach out to those young women in the age group of 16-35 who have been deprived in their childhood with the education, skills and employment are now happily enrolled and trained to overcome these deprivations with much positive outcome. While writing all these statements, I recall each visit to the project area to witness the change processes that were taking place within those women who had never dreamed of being so empowered and self-reliant so soon in their lifetimes."
"Manjari Foundation is IPE Global’s implementation partner in Dholpur, Rajasthan under the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), UK supported Project Udaan that aims at reducing teenage pregnancies. They have been instrumental in successfully piloting interventions for improving the knowledge of adolescents around sexual and reproductive health (SRH) in Bari block of Dholpur. Their efforts in organizing a team to take up the issue of adolescent SRH and facilitating its implementation with great sensitivity across the block has not only been recognized by the district administration, but has also paved way for attempting a scale-up across the district. Their coordination with the community-level institutions, local government bodies and the target group has been noteworthy and exemplary. "