MasterCard on Thursday said it has pledged $50,000 to the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA).

With MasterCard’s assistance, SEWA’s tools and equipment library, inaugurated here on Thursday, would make available farm equipment to poor farmers at nominal rent. The library aims to benefit over 7,000 farmers across five villages of Mehsana district in Gujarat.

Timely access to the needed tools and equipment would help improve the beneficiaries’ quality of production, enhance their skills and increase their income. The initiative will be managed by the Vanlaxmi Tree Grower Cooperative that works in cooperative farming.

The farmers will also be given management training and inputs to increase their farm planning and management ability and improve their yield and productivity, said Ari Sarker, Division President, South Asia, MasterCard.

“It is a great honour for MasterCard to collaborate with the SEWA and help women in India realise their economic potential as entrepreneurs”, he said, adding the library is yet another initiative aligned with MasterCard’s global philanthropic and social responsibility efforts to further financial inclusion through entrepreneurship.

Reema Nanavaty, Director for Economic and Rural Development, SEWA, pointed out that the library would empower small and marginal women farmers and help them increase their incomes, yield and productivity. It would ensure their economic, food and livelihood security. The initiative will be owned and managed by the women small farmers collective and would be an answer to the need for their financial inclusion.

In July 2012, MasterCard and SEWA had built the seventh Rural Urban Distribution Initiative (RUDI) processing centre in Bodeli, Gujarat, to provide multiple employment opportunities to tribal farmers, achieve fair prices for them for their produce and to safeguard their interests. Around 200 groups having 4,500 individual farmers have been organised and they are getting 20 per cent higher price than locally offered by the traders.

The centre is also providing regular employment to 45 processors and 50 women who distribute their products at 35 villages by covering 1,100 households every month.

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