Madhya Pradesh gets United Nations Public Award
Bhopal: Madhya Pradesh Government’s Cottage & Village Industry Department has been honoured with United Nations Public Award for year 2013. United Nations honours outstanding public welfare works at international level under various categories every year. This award will be conferred on state’s Cottage & Village Industry Department for novel initiative of rural haats.
It was decided to hand over management of rural haats to women’s self-help groups set up for women’s empowerment with the objective of strengthening the groups and help the establish their access to resources. The decision to hand over management of rural haats to women’s self-help groups increased their economic self-reliance and participation of women in social decisions was ensured due to which continued to become stronger and continued their activities constantly during the project period. Rural haats were started, which are still being run even after 11 years without any external cooperation. It is noteworthy that savings of some of these SHGs is more than Rs. 90 thousand. Such haats were also started in other places of the state and are still being run.
The management of rural haats has proved to be very effective in women’s empowerment. Innovation in the form of rural haats was entered in United Nation’s the award category “Initiative to make public delivery system gender responsive”. United Nations found this entry worthy of award after keen examination. United Nations will bestow this award on Principal Secretary Cottage & Village Industry Smt. Kanchan Jain at Bahrain’s capital Manama on June 27, 2013.
