• CAIM was designed with a goal of developing resilient, sustainable and diversified on-farm and off-farm livelihood systems, allowing households to face climatic and market risks without falling back into poverty and distress and empower women through microfinance and microenterprises
• According to the Impact Evaluation Report , the impact of income-generating work on the household incomes of women has been robust and has substantially increased (56.2%) in the CAIM households as compared to that of the Control ones (28.8%). This reflects the noticeable success of the CAIM programmes to engage women through different programmes linked to farm as well as non-farm enterprises since 2012
• Another striking finding of the report was that a higher number of women in all the districts availed of formal loans as compared to men. The total proportion of formal loans taken by women was 63.4% as against 46.8%for men. The higher share of formal credit and lower share of informal loans availed of by women is a strong indicator of women’s empowerment stemming from the CAIM programme
• All the women in the selected areas were associated with at least one SHG. Most of the members readily revealed that their incomes as well as savings had increased due to the CAIM interventions. The project supported 13,235 SHGs with a total membership of 155,784 women.
• The project area includes 1,200 villages in the districts of Akola, Amravati, Buldhana, Wardha, Washim and Yavatmal.