Initially BISWA had a humble beginning with its small presence in the District of Sambalpur, Orissa, India in the year 1995. Today, through relentless efforts from the entire team of BISWA, the Organisation stands straight, working hand in hand with 5,50,570 families and 34,299 Self Help Groups in 14 states of the country. Its integrated approach has now emerged as one of the successful means towards holistic social development by bringing a convergence of Micro Finance, Micro Enterprise, Micro Insurance, and Micro Marketing. Its development programmes address poverty eradication, livelihood promotion, basic health services, water and sanitation, education, social marketing, natural resources management gender and equity. The Organisation is geared to address the burning problems of poverty and unemployment.
After carefully assessing the presence and impact of the Organisation in fourteen States of the country, we have fixed a target of creating one million employment avenues by March 31st, 2011 through optimum utilization of local resources and opportunities. With its highly skilled human resources, sensitized on development issues, established infrastructure, availability of proper MIS, appropriate technology and software for successful implementation of the targeted goal; the Organisation is now closer to its vision of social change and development. As a pro-developmental Organisation, it is now able to promote public-private partnership envisaged by the Government. The Hatibari Health Home is one of the many examples in this context, wherein socialization and rehabilitation of people with disabilities and deformities on account of leprosy are being successfully implemented. BISWA has always believed in innovation and renovation. Its innovative approach to address the long felt large gap in the field of primary educations is reflected in its innovative schools functioning in many remote villages of Orissa. Similarly its renovation programmes led us to safeguard, revive, improve and utilize existing traditional approaches of water conservation, brass & bell metal, folklore & music, weaving, terracotta and bamboo craft. These programmes led to participation of rural women folk in large number. BISWA is also equally concerned and has been relentlessly working towards achieving its share in meeting the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of United Nations.
BISWA has a systematic approach towards conceptualizing new ideas, implementing action research projects and then documenting them properly for use of development practitioners. In this process, we capture the learning from both our successes and failures, which help us in strengthening our intervention strategy and methodology. With its constant growth and increased presence in the development scenario, the Organisation aspires to be a resource agency of repute at the regional and the national level.
The actual design behind all these exercises is to promote effective and efficient self governance by the people. BISWA Federations of SHGs, in fact are functioning as Mutual Benefit Trusts, and could be cited as ideal examples in this context. In these years we have learnt both from our own mistakes and inspired by our bit of success and innovations. This quest for learning will remain with us forever. The learning comes from the 14 states and covering all Districts of Orissa and Chhatisgarh. And the process is still going on. We started as a District level Organisation at the outset and today have found our place at the national level. The next goal is obviously to reach out to other parts of the globe. This could not have been possible without the continuous support of the BISWA Governing Body Members, Policy Advisory Council Members, our Colleagues, Members of Communities with whom we are working, Donors, Investors, Bankers and Financial Institutions, Altruist Individuals and all the Stakeholders at the grassroot level, who have reposed their confidence on us.
