Capacity building and its impact on members of self help group in South Kerala

This paper tries to prove the need and also understand the perception of members of the self-help groups in the necessity of training and development needed for the effectiveness for attaining the primary goal of Self Help Groups – upliftment. The impact of capacity building programmes on the functioning of self-help groups in the districts of Kollam, Alappuzha, Pathanamthitta and Ernakulam were studied. This study is compiled with the help of primary data covered over a period of 8 months. Sample size of the study was 120 respondents from 37 self-help groups in these districts. 18 SHG’s were located in rural areas and 19 SHG’s located in urban areas. The self-help group was Kudumbasree unit and hence the respondents were women. The data was subject to simple percentage analysis. Both qualitative and quantitative research methods were followed. From the data we could understand that the respondent’s perception towards the effectiveness of training is positive and it is also confirmed from their response to the questions related to their return on investments. From the perception of the respondents it is seen that training, type of training and duration of training is directly proportional to the Return on Investments.