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Through initiatives at the grassroots level, Manjari Foundation, founded by Sanjay Kumar Sharma, empowers rural Indian women from marginalised communities overcome social injustices, poverty, and exclusion. This it achieves in two ways: With an adaptable women-centric model unique to Manjari Foundation that manoeuvres social and economic change even in the most adverse conditions; and with its partnership with Rang De. Through its extensive network of women’s institutions, Manjari Foundation executes interventions across a range of areas including livelihood, health, education, natural resource management, etc. and in doing so, has thus far brought a change in the lives of over 4,70,000 Indian women on the fringes of society. It operates in over 900 villages across 13 districts in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttarakhand with a special focus on the Bundelkhand regions. Recently, it also extended to operating in two West African countries as well i.e. Mali and Senegal and aims to expand to the whole of West Africa over the coming years. The need for such a partnership A critical part of Manjari Foundation’s ability to impact and change the lives of these women is credit access. This is largely attributable to the fact that the starting point of said impact and change, is one where these women have little to no financial independence. As such, they have neither capital nor liquidity and that makes it hard for them to even start out at all- whether that be education, entrepreneurship, access to healthcare. And that’s why the Manjari Foundation X Rang De partnership continues to be so successful, producing tangible results that could only have been achieved through access to said capital requirements— Manjari Foundation has a vision for a new world for the women of rural India, and Rang De enables that vision with its easily accessible and affordable loans at interest rates significantly lower than those charged by the banks and private lenders. Not only that but most of these women, by virtue of ranking poorly on their credit scores, are not granted access to any sort of credit at all in the first place. They are deemed risky and therefore, stopped steadfast from pursuing their dreams for a better life where they get to be in control. It is this partnership- marrying idealism with functionality, that has made the Manjari Foundation X Rang De partnership not only a successful one, but rather a necessary one. Impact created with Rang De In order to better understand the impact created through our partnership with Manjari foundation, let’s see some numbers: In the year 2022, Rang De disbursed a total of 74 loans. The women that received these loans were all first-time borrowers and the amount disbursed was INR 30 lakhs. Then in 2023, that number went up from 74 loans to 253 loans with a sum total of Rs 1.2 crores, also to women who were all first-time borrowers. This means a total of 327 loans of which 314 were unique borrowers and a total of Rs 1.5 crores was disbursed across them. A 77.37% increase in the number of loans disbursed between 2022 and 2023. The loans involved 2701 unique social investors who funded 158 were first-time borrowers. Going forward, Manjari Foundation hopes to continue empowering the lives of Indian women that are on the brinks of society. It envisions doing so upon the foundation of its driving values: trust, dignity, autonomy, equity, authenticity, and integrity. Values that define the day-to-day operations of Rang De which are committed to making this empowerment possible through transparent, affordable, and timely access to credit. If you would like to empower rural Indian women from being on the sidelines of society to becoming a pillar of it through financial empowerment, become a social investor at https://rangde.in.
Image credits : Manjari Foundation
