W omen at grassroots are the potential change agents who are capable of bringing wonders to the fellow poor women when they work together. DHAN Foundation works very intensively with women at grassroots through its Kalanjiam Community banking Programme (KCBP). Kalanjiam Community Banking Programme is being implemented since 1990 by DHAN Foundation with a focus of poverty reduction and women empowerment through promotion of sustainable people institutions for poor women. The design of the programme is to build the capacities of the poor women, enable them to manage financial services and build strong, sustainable Peoples’ Institutions to address their development needs. With over 30 years of its engagement in community-led development financing, the programme has evolved into a scalable and enabling model of development finance (microfinance) spearheaded by the poor women across India in rural, urban slum, tribal and coastal contexts.

DHAN Kalanjiam Foundation, the first subsidiary of DHAN Foundation was promoted in 2002 with the focus on

• ) scaling-up of community banking by promotion of Kalanjiam Self Help Group (SHG)-Federations and facilitation of access to affordable financial services among the poor households at large scale in diversified contexts across the country;
• sustaining Kalanjiam SHG-Federations as collective with women leadership; and
• impacting household poverty, women empowerment and large-scale development through integrated and holistic development interventions.

International Women’s day was celebrated across all the regions wherein a range of activities were happened. Events like seminars, workshops, conventions, debates, skits, dialogues, Padayathra, shramdhan, competitions, impact sharing, case study presentations, screening films on women empowerment and reflections, leaders meet, round table conversation, etc were held. The entire events have once again proved the solidarity of the women at grassroots. The silver jubilee celebrations of DHAN Foundation were also combined during the day wherein the noble contributions from various partner institutions were acknowledged by the respective regions.