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Improving income and empowering self-help group members through a goat rearing initiative in Bihar, India

Shivani Singh, Population Coun
Supriya Verma, Population Council
Ankit Nanda, Population Council
Ruchika Mathur, Population Council
Surendra Singh, Population Council
Avishek Hazra, PopulationCouncil Consulting

In India, there has been increasing focus on women’s self-help groups, supported by the National Rural Livelihood Mission that aim to improve livelihood opportunity and empower women. In Bihar, Aga Khan Foundation is implementing a goat rearing program, which is being scaled up in 13 districts through JEEViKA, toward financial resilience and to enable women’s access to control over resources. Using a mixed-method data collection approach, this paper examined the effectiveness of the intervention on women’s income and empowerment. Findings indicated that the animal health worker’s economic conditions improved over the project duration, they gained respect and recognition within the community and talked about personal growth with increased confidence, improved knowledge and better mobility due to their work. Encouraging rural women to work as animal health workers, training them on gender equality, women empowerment, and entrepreneurial and financial skills, enabling them to establish micro ventures to diversify their source of incomes, and strengthening the trade groups/ collectives of women animal rearers to further improve the market value chains could be effective for such interventions in improving women’s incomes and empower them.

Keywords: Gender, Mixed methods research, Qualitative data/methods/approaches, Economic analysis

See extended abstract.

  Presented in Session P5.