The State Government has launched a three-pronged strategy to eradicate poverty through the Odisha Livelihood Mission (OLM).
The strategy includes social mobilisation for capacity building to increase income of the poor, extending bank linkages to create employment opportunities and enhance micro-finance to reduce vulnerability.
The Mission has intensified its activities for strengthening community-level institutions to make its interventions self-sustaining. Capacity of the self help groups (SHGs) and producer groups are enhanced through skill upgradation to make proper use of funds pumped into the sector.
Though the programme aimed at covering all the households and bringing one woman of each family into the SHG fold, it has not been possible due to lack of mobilisation by the field level functionaries, official sources said.
Five to 15 SHGs spread over one or two villages are being organised into cluster level forum (CLF). Meanwhile, Gram Panchayat level federation (GPLF) and block level federation (BLF) have been completed, the sources said.
Professional resource persons (PRP) at block level have been selected to provide requisite service to GPLFs, CLFs, producer groups and SHGs. Besides, community resource persons have been chosen from among the practitioners and members of the SHG to operate at GP level on performance based incentive for support activities to producer groups.
Besides, livelihood consultant has been engaged at the district level to provide technical knowhow.
Steps have been taken to revitalise those SHGs which have remained dormant. Skill training is also provided to producers and farmers at many centres, Mission sources said.
The State Government has provided a budgetary support of Rs 240 crore under the annual action plan for the current financial year. The plan includes principal components like institutional building, financial inclusion, livelihood promotion, social inclusion and project management.