Promotion of Savings and Credit among the Rural Poor

The Project for Cooperative Action by Small farmers(PROCAS)assists small farmers to increase their income levels and thereby raise their living standards promoting self reliance and development.

PROCAS implementsThrift and Credit Cooperative Societies(TCCS)in target villages to achieve its aims of self sufficiency and development for small farmers through credit and savings.

The implementation of the savings and credit scheme is wholly undertaken by PROCAS staff.

PROCAS is supported by the government through the Ministry of Food and Cooperatives. Government officers at village level who are involved in rural development activities directly or indirectly assist PROCAS programmes and its income generating micro projects.

The assistance is by way of the government officers meeting the target groups, discussing their farming problems and making suggestions to PROCAS and by organising workshops for target groups on activities such as bee keeping, poultry, coconut cultivation etc; which are part of the activities under the PROCAS programme. In this way PROCAS serves as a linking institution between the government and the farmers.

To implement the credit and savings scheme, a poor rural farming village is selected and the government officers of the area are briefed on the programme.

Research officers of PROCAS then visit selected farming villages and carry out several surveys to identify small farmer households from the households in the entire village.

The target population is then mobilised to form themselves into a group, which is the one single group for the entire village and called TCCS.

The programme is introduced, village opinion sought and possible micro income generating activities are identified.

The group selects its own leader who is generally a respected person in the village At the first meeting of the group, the members contribute an agreed sum of money, generally Rs.100, to purchase shares in the society. Also at the first meeting a committee of 7 people are elected from the membership who will be responsible for the management of the Society.