CRISIL Foundation certified over 500 women grassroots-trainers as ‘GramShakti Sakhis’ at a convocation organized at the North-Eastern Development Finance Corporation Ltd premises in Guwahati on Thursday, November 3, 2022.

In Assam, CRISIL Foundation started its intervention with its flagship financial capability-building programme “Moi Pragati” with the support of RGVN and other implementing partners. After achieving significant improvement in awareness levels, CRISIL Foundation modified the intervention strategy to drive deeper and long-term behavioural change. Thus was born a cadre of community workers called ‘Sakhis’.

Currently, over 1,800+ trained Sakhis are engaged in 2,400+ villages of Assam and Rajasthan, having reached over a million rural community members (mostly women), and facilitated over 7.5 lakh linkages to formal banking, financial products and government schemes. The cadre is financially self-sustaining and replicable. To ensure replicability, the training programme that builds the capacity of the Sakhis has been adapted into an online learning and certification module, namely “Gram Shakti”.

It can be accessed through an Android app and covers topics of Financial Inclusion and Literacy, including financial planning, savings, investment, loans, insurance, pension and livelihoods etc.