An all women savings bank in rural area of Dehradun

Dehradun, Mar 12 (ANI): Setting an inspirational example of women's empowerment in Uttarakhand, a group of rural women in a Dehradun village have set up a bank which today has a capital worth over one million rupees!

The bank has generated a major hope among household women for transforming their lives through personal savings.

The women in Dehradun's Sahaspur village joined hands two years ago to open the Mahila Bachhat Bank or, women saving bank after they failed to get loans from existing banks here.

The started the venture under "Women's initiative for self employment" scheme which was introduced here to ensure employment to rural women. The village women started saving and soon set up a bank for women.

Since opening a bank, women here started depositing their savings in the bank. If required they also take loans.

Today, these rural women can take loan from their own bank at 8 per cent interest rate and it is helping them to small business like pickles, bakery products, beauty parlour and spices.

Presently, the bank has 300 household women as its members and 65 women have availed bank loans. The bank today boasts of having a sum of a million rupees as its capital.

The opening of this bank has not only given the resident village women a sense of pride but also given support to many of them to explore opportunities for work by taking up small business opportunities.

"Our aim of opening this bank was to provide an opportunity to those women who wanted to earn on their own. Usually, women undergo training to start their own ventures but due to lack of funds they were unable to do so. So we thought why not start our own bank? All the members of the bank hold meetings very month and deposit money at the Mahila Bank and the money deposited in the bank is then given to needy women. So it's a great help to these women in the form of loans," said Kiran Negi, Chairman, Mahila Bank, Dehradun.

Started two years ago, an increasing number of women are now coming to the bank and depositing their savings.

"We are very happy with the bank. We get three times more than what we deposit in the bank," said Asha Pandey, an account holder women in Mahila Bank. By Asheesh Goyal (ANI)