Aroha Multipurpose Society

AROHA is perhaps one of those few professional social organizations that came into existence primarily to facilitate emerging NGOs and community based organizations for adopting proficient methodologies in order to address relevant issues for fiscal endurance and up-gradation. Aptly named AROHA, the organization is literally attempting to create a crescendo for scaling up the efforts to bring focused transformation in the lives of women who are attempting at their economic revival and sustenance. The organization has a special focus on women and women’s groups that are keen on self employment opportunities.

The brain child of two sensitive women who are professional management practitioners with expertise in marketing and research – AROHA was created as a means to an end for bringing qualified know-how to the growing fraternity of Self Help Groups proliferating in the NGO world.

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Both Vishakha Rao-Jathar and Sharmistha Gandhi are Management Specialists with more than fifteen years background in Marketing and Market-based Research.

Abdicating lucrative occupations in the corporate world they tentatively set forth to start off with their dream of providing support to the growing numbers of small scale entrepreneurs that were escalating in the all-pervading SHG scenario.

Sustainable livelihood and life of dignity for every woman

AROHA was established as a mediating entity for assisting the interested agencies to adopt professional norms in their miniscule commercial set-ups. With the growing numbers of financial institutions providing monetary loans it became all the more essential to provide the necessary knowledge to such business enterprises in order to make them skilled at the rules and regulations of market based strategies for leading them on to make a go of things. Also for the last two decades NGOs working for the SHG formation for savings and credit activities were more focused in social goals rather than enterprise management.

With little or no skills in rendering enterprise management for economic betterment and also for lack of clear cut objectives in this direction, the IGA schemes being put forward through financial institutions were continually being doomed.

AROHA entered the social development sector with the aim of striking a balance between social and economic empowerment. It therefore became a challenge to instruct the simple, untutored and unlettered SHG members to become capable of understanding the mechanics of small businesses. More so, to promote income-generating undertaking in a way that they began reaping good returns and learned to underwrite their loans.

From 2004 till date AROHA steadfastly remained focused on promotion of livelihoods, capacity building initiatives and extending training support as well as surfacing as a resource agency for all of the above for the benefit of other allied agencies. With time self help group formation activities were also undertaken.