JEEVIKA is India’s largest state level women’s socio-economic empowerment program, working directly with nearly 90 lakh families in rural Bihar and is one of the flagship programs for poverty alleviation by the Govt. of Bihar. The objective of the program is to diversify and enhance household-level incomes and improve access to and use of nutrition and sanitation services among rural households. The program involves mobilization of women into affinity-based Self-Help Groups, commodity specific producer groups and higher federations. These community institutions enable collective capacity building, improved access to finance and public services and direct linkage to markets. The program was introduced in 2007 under the World Bank supported Bihar Rural Livelihoods Project (BRLP) in 6 districts of Bihar. Successful implementation of the first phase of the program (2007-11) provided a large-scale proof of concept where women collectives emerged as platforms for delivering transformational socio-economic outcomes and prompted restructuring of the erstwhile SGSY program into the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM). JEEViKA is presently funded under the World Bank supported Bihar Transformative Development Project (BTDP), NRLM and leverages significant resources from several state level livelihoods and welfare schemes.

JEEVIKA presently operates in 34,043 villages across 534 blocks and 38 districts of Bihar. Under the program, Bihar has the highest number of SHGs nationally, with more than 912124 Self-Help Groups, further federated into 59085 Village Organizations and 978 Cluster Level Federations. By the year 2020, the program targets to mobilize a total of 10 lakh SHGs covering nearly 70 percent of rural Bihar. The program focuses on poorest of the poor by initiating social mobilization from poorest hamlets in villages, ensuring adequate representation of poorest section in group and federation leaders, implementing specialized financial products around food and health security to reduce vulnerability and linking eligible households to key govt. schemes for accessing benefits and entitlements.Today, more than 25,026 JEEViKA Village Organizations are capable of undertaking collective procurement of food grains including pulses and oil for its most needy members, ensuring basic nutritional security at the household level.

JEEVIKA has successfully amplified the reach of rural bank branches in Bihar by developing SHGs as credible borrowers. JEEViKA groups have thus far leveraged more than INR 10650 crores of bank credit, stimulating investments into productive livelihoods while reducing vulnerability to seasonal shocks and predatory local moneylenders. In addition to financial support from the project, JEEViKA SHG women have collectively mobilized nearly 1056.90 crores in small savings, highlighting the immense inherent potential of rural women. Improved access to finance has resulted in increased household incomes and solidified women’s status as equal partners within their families. Today, there are more than 6.48 lakh JEEVIKA women entrepreneurs in rural Bihar, who have successfully established small businesses that not only provide additional incomes but also create new jobs in rural economy.

In the alternative banking intervention, 4571 Bank Sakhis were selected as Behaviour change Agents. This led to the transaction of Rs. 7881.4 crore and commission of Rs. 1934.2 lakh. Similarly, Pashu Sakhi Model and Fishery Intervention have achieved remarkable progress in terms of both coverage and production.

Under JEEVIKA, Didi ki Rasoi is a community-run canteen model. It has emerged as a successful enterprise model to provide quality food to patients at hospitals, officials at banks, school students, etc. a total of 75 Didi ki Rasoi have been opened in district and sub-divisional hospitals, academic institutions, schools being run by SC/ST welfare department, and other places. The bee-keeping intervention has been made in 95 blocks of 22 districts.

Under this campaign, in 2021-22, with the support of the Department of Forest, Environment and Climate Change, JEEVIKA took an initiative to provide 1.5 crore saplings to community members, focusing on environment conservation. In 2022.23, altogether 86.5 lakh saplings were planted and Aadhar numbers of 45.0 lakh members has been updated in Van-Mitra Application. In 2021-22, a total of 97.79 lakh sapling were planted and Aadhar number of 82.55 lakh community members was updated in the Van-Mitra App.

The concept of clean and green surroundingss and conservation of biodiversity and water have led JEEVIKA to initiate the programme Didi ki Nursery. A total of 483 nurseries have been established by September, 2022. Of the total nurseries, 232 have been started with the support of the Department of Forest, Environment and Climate Change and 251 through MGNREGA.