Grameen and Kudumbashree as Socio-Economic Development Models - Essay Example

Community Development Question One Explain the (dis)advantages of focusing on women as agents of development and compare and contrast Grameen and Kudumbashree as socio-economic development models that focus on women. Women, given the opportunities in their countries, communities and families, make great agents of development. There has been gender discrimination whereby women have not been given the opportunities to lead, get education, own financial assets and have access to better improved reproductive health and access to family planning. Denying women the rights to undertake development has left women discriminated and unable to prove what they are capable of doing. Giving women the women the powers to engage themselves in development has broken the social and cultural norms that hold women backwards. There are several advantages associated with focusing on women as agents of development. There is of greater significance in a woman’s education than the man’s education. The fact that most women are uneducated, as compared men, this has had a hindrance to women having exposure and understand their worth and potential. Actually, most women who are not learned do not understand their rights to have a voice to speak on their won. Women make the highest population of people in the world and using them as agents of change is a great way of improving both economic and social life. Therefore, educating women is one of the ways of developing the world and this is possible if women have access to education and health and the issue has a significant intrinsic value. Treating both genders equally is a way of reducing gender imbalances existing in most communities. With equal education, women have enhanced capacity to contribute to the economic progress. Human capital gained through education improves the levels of productivity of individuals. From many researches, women have been deprived the right to learn and this issue is quite problematic because it showers the social efficiency. The economic benefits of educating boys are equal to those of educating males. However, the social benefits gained from suing women as the agents for development is higher than those of investing to educate males are. Women education has great and powerful effects on the social efficiency. The social outcomes of focusing women as development agents’ are very high as compared to those of applying men. Kudumbasree means prosperity of the family where women orient themselves in community based poverty alleviation programme by use of micro credit and self help groups implemented in Kerala by the State Government. Grameen Bank is a bank that offers services and credit meant to develop the social economic status of Bangladesh communities. The bank ensures that it avails economic tools to the women in support of socioeconomic empowerment of women. The main aim of the programme is to assist women in rural areas to remove poverty, empower women and encouraging their entrepreneurial activities and other wide range of activities. The programme gives the women a chance to participate as active leaders involved in development initiatives. The programme helps the women to stop being the recipients of the public assistance. Kudumbasree is a movement is focusing o the woman empowerment through credit societies, rural micro enterprise, linkage banking, and lease land farming. All the activities implemented by the movement aim at improving the livelihood of the underprivileged women in the state. Grameen Bank offers collateral free loans and uses a simple interest in calculating the interest for the loans. 97 percent of the loan beneficiaries are always women thus working towards using women as agents of development in the society. Question Two Compare and evaluate two of following socio-economic development models. Be certain to make your criteria explicit. (multi-localization; community economic development; cooperatives etc)when evaluating, consider differences (and similarities where necessary) between organization, values, ownership, strengths and weaknesses. There are many models of socio-economic development such as multi-localization, cooperatives and community economic development. Cooperatives are one of the ways of addressing a wide variety of economic challenges in societies. They are helpful and a significant option to farmers, small business operators and have a great relevance in the large-scale economic development. Development of cooperative is helpful in building the community wealth. However, the positive impact of cooperatives is evident in low-income communities where investors and conventional leaders are repeatedly absent. People running a cooperative should be those who lack required resources to start or run their individual businesses. Cooperatives create employment to the community, promote social inclusion and responsibility, increase sustainable economic capacity of the communities, develop leadership within a community, and create a stronger sense of community. Cooperatives operate under several principles such as open and voluntary membership, a democratic control of the members, participation of members economically, independence and autonomy, education, information and training, great concern for the community and cooperation amongst the cooperatives. Use of the above-mentioned principles is to meet the primary goal of meeting the common needs of the members of the community. In addition, the cooperatives maintain a successful and sustainable business. On the other hand, cooperatives work to meet the significant goals of maximizing the quality of the services and at the same time improve the welfare of the community. Community economic development (CED) is an action undertaken by people in a particular geographically segmented community to come up with local economic opportunities and improve the living standards of life in the community. CED does recognition of the local opportunities and challenges as varied as the individual community members. CED goes ahead to identify and capitalize on the available local opportunities to fuel economic growth within the community as well as the levels of employment. The CEDs work through development of wholly new business or new industries, adding value to the already existing sectors, strengthening community’s capacity, improving the local infrastructure to assist the communities to achieve their full economic potential. The initiatives conducted through CEDs are implemented to conquer crises and create opportunities for the disadvantaged in the community. CED works as a model of localizing the economies in communities and acts as a process of blending both social and economic development to promote the economic, ecological, cultural, and social welfare of the communities involved. CED is an alternative used instead of conventional economic development. It addresses issues such as poverty, unemployment, job loss, loss of community control and environmental degradation leading to poor economic status in the community by addressing all the problems in a holistic and participatory way. References Maser, C., & Maser, C. (1997). Sustainable community development: Principles and concepts. Delray Beach, Fla: St. Lucie Press. Read More