ILS LEDA is a partner of ISUDWOG - Inclusive and Sustainable Development for Women and Girls - a project co-financed by the European Union and carried out in the district of Osmanabad (India), with particular reference to 8 blocks (clusters of villages).

The project is leaded by SSP (Swayam Shikshan Prayog) with relevant  experience and capacities to empower grassroots women and their organisations, SSEN (Sakhi Social Enterprise Network) has outstanding management capacity in executing flagship programs that empower local communities, and LEF-Italia, the European  network of the Women’s Lobby .

The global objective of this project is to strengthen civil society and its organisations in the district of Osmanabad, to be influent in the socio-economic development, through participatory bottom up processes, at benefit of women and girls.

The project started in 2020 and will last 3 years. It is striving to bring 5,400 women entrepreneurs and women farmers into the social and economic mainstream through:

1. elaborating participatory competitive, inclusive, and sustainable development strategies for four pre-selected value chains: pulses, dairy, vegetables and goats, through applying the ILS LEDA RESCO methodology
2. linking women with other local actors into a strategic Alliance, the ASIDO (Alliance for Sustainable and Inclusive Development not Osmanabad), for increasing their impact on decision making processes, through using the ILS LEDA large experience this issue
3. supporting women business at every stage of the businesses from production to marketing
4. creating a mechanism for improving the service supply, through applying the ILS LEDA TESSY methodology.

Despite the tremendous impact of Covid-19 on countries such as Italy and India, the partners took the decision of not stopping the Action and the responsibility and the commitment of continuing it, although cancelling all the international missions and most of the local mobility. This was substituted by activities at distance (webinars, on line meetings, exchanges of emails, etc.), and it imposed to make significant changes in methodologies (didactic and operational), human resources, and schedule.

In the first year of the project, the focus of the actions was majorly improving the access of women and girls to the social and economic resources through several training sessions aimed at building capacities of 60 representatives of local actors (women associations and business groups, local administrations, service providers and mentors) on issues such as: participatory governance, strategic approach for boosting competitive, inclusive, and sustainable development, value chain approach, women equality, building a comprehensive territorial service system. Finally the ILSLEDA RESCO methodology was adapted to the specific context and introduced, and it will allow the assessment of the selected value chains

The 60 above mentioned representatives were selected by SSP, and constituted the District Action Steering Committee, that will accompany the Action implementation, and constitutes the embryo for the establishment of the ASIDO.

Further, as a part of the project and to answer to the need of the crisis, SSP has provided financial support to 380 small women entrepreneurs and food ration to 250 vulnerable families.