Why in news:

• Women in rural areas in Sangrur district of Punjab are joining Promoting Employment of Households through Entrepreneurship and Livelihood (PEHEL) introduced by Sangrur administration to set up their small enterprises.
• Through this initiative the Sangrur district administration is aiming to promote entrepreneurship and support vulnerable sections, especially women from the backward communities, to become entrepreneurs.

Key Points:

• As goes one of the many success stories under the project, in August 2021, 35-year-old Sapinder Kaur of Rajalheri village of Sangrur district joined PEHEL for setting up a medical store in her village. She had completed a nursing course in 2018 and had joined a private hospital after that. Now, she wants to become an entrepreneur and has become a member of village-level self-help group (SHG). She took a loan of Rs 1 lakh from the SHG last year and now Rs 60,000 is left to be paid back. The medical store is doing well and she is able to manage her home as well.
• Sangrur Deputy Commissioner Jitendra Jorwal, while detailing about the project said that PEHEL is an initiative to empower SHG members to establish their enterprises in rural areas. The district administration is looking to promote entrepreneurship and support vulnerable sections to become first-time entrepreneurs.
• According to the Additional Deputy Commissioner (Rural Development), under PEHEL, women are choosing different businesses like starting a bus service, a travel agency, an entertainment company, setting up a slipper unit, cow dung log-making unit, etc. Women want to try their hand at different occupations in which household members are involved and they are giving good results as well.
• For such rural startups, loan is provided by SHGs and training by PEHEL. In this regard, the administration also helps the women sell their produce by organising a PEHEL mandi in which farmers doing organic farming also come to sell their produce.
• Another successful entrepreneur under the project is running an oil extraction unit which she started recently. She extracts oil from coconut, almond, mustard seeds and sesame seeds, and is also working as Bank Sakhi. She is Class XII pass. She took a loan of Rs 1.5 lakh from the SHG of the village and 50% of it has already been repaid. PEHEL also helped her with the training for this unit.
• It is worth mentioning here that the SHG member who sits in bank branch to support branch manager is called a Bank Sakhi. She helps the SHG members in day-to-day banking services like documentation, loan facilitation, recovery and others but does not undertake financial transactions.
• PEHEL was conceived in this financial year. In August, a pilot project was started to prepare 430 school uniform kits for Government Senior Secondary School, Sangrur. Women of five villages were roped in to make these uniform sets. As the project became successful, the administration decided to get school uniforms made for the entire Sunam block’s government schools for the academic year 2023-24.
• PEHEL identifies budding rural entrepreneurs and helps, supports, and motivates them in several critical services such as business development, mentoring and training, finance as well as access to banking services. The administration aims to replicate and scale up this initiative to promote other enterprises mainly in three categories – trading, manufacturing, and services.