Sarhad Rural Support Programme

Hameeda bibi who lives in a rented house along with her husband and three children is one of the many beneficiaries of Village Bank Nawanshar. The household initially had one source of income i.e of her husband. Hameeda’s husband who owns a small poultry farm has access to his earnings after every two months due to the specific nature of poultry business. The household thus always felt itself stretched for cash and was reluctant to commit itself for regular monthly cash payouts, including paying for children school fees. Realizing the importance of quality education, Hameeda always preferred to extend quality education to her children by having them enrolled at an English medium school.

Part of the Rural Support Programmes’ Network in Pakistan, Sarhad Rural Support Program (SRSP) is the very first replication of AKRSP approach to poverty reduction in Pakistan.  SRSP is currently operating in 13 districts and also in two agencies of FATA.  Following the integrated approach, SRSP is working in a multidisciplinary fields that includes; community mobilization and institutional building, participatory infrastructure development, human resource development, micro enterprise development and microfinance.

Contributing to the overall vision of the organization, the Microfinance program of SRSP strives to reduce financial vulnerabilities of the disadvantaged households by providing them with the opportunity to have an easy access to institutional microfinance services.  During the past 4 years a total of Rs. 231 million have been disbursed to almost 23,000 clients (60 percent women) with an average loan size of just over Rs. 10,000/- Using the average loan size as proxy indicator, the organization had its success in having an effective outreach to poor and financially vulnerable households by large.  Good governance as a strength, lack of resources as a weakness, outreach as an opportunity and growing Talibanization in the province as a threat have been recognized to the Program by our major donor i.e. PPAF during a Strategic Planning Exercise that was carried out in Nov’ 2007. 

Provisions of finical services are believed to address issue of gender disparity more adequately.  Rural woman is being perceived in a more traditional role in the economy (invisible contribution i.e. underpaid and unpaid) and is assumed unable to be economically productive.  Increase in woman income on the other hand we believe benefits a household to a greater extend as oppose to a commensurate increase in a man’s income.  Evidently, women who have access to financial services (especially credit & savings) have shown remarkable improvements in their livelihood. In rural areas, we have witnessed, reliance on secondary occupation is increasing as agriculture can no longer meet the income needs of the growing rural population and subsistence agriculture cannot absorb the labor surplus.

• Agriculture: mostly for production of on and off-farm vegetable and fruit nurseries
• Livestock/ Poultry: livestock is since raised for milk and meat therefore poultry, sheep and goats are very important to rural women for they are often the only source of income fully under their control.
• Trading: market or house based petty shops, stalls of fruits or vegetables
• Manufacturing/ Production: women in rural areas are engaged in a range of different traditional handicrafts, embroidery and baskets making etc.

• Lowering costs i.e. buying in bulk or replacing more costly sources of working capital;
• Increasing production or inventory;
• Diversifying income generating activities.