Launched in 1994, BISWA is looking with pride 14 years of eventful past. In these years we have been able to carve a niche in the circle of civil society organizations. Initially when we formed the first self help group of women, we have not the faintest idea of where it may lead us to, as more than a quarter of a lack of the present strength of women self help group has given us a mighty recognition in the social development sector. Our integrated approach has now emerged as one of the successful means to holistic social development by bring convergence of Micro Finance, Micro Enterprise, Micro Marketing. Our development program now addresses poverty eradication, live hood promotion, basic health services, water and sanitation, education, social marketing, natural resource management, Corporate Social Responsibility and gender equity. We are able to address the most frightening unemployment issue in our society by mobilizing human resources to its utmost level within our capacity. As a result of it, BISWA is now being considered as one of the sought after avenue for employment opportunity. Inspired by the small successes, we are now in a position to fix over own target of creating one million employment avenues by March 31st, 2011. We are treading firmly to achieve this goal as our own MDG. Moreover resource mobilization an optimum utilization thereof, is our core strength. Consequently, they have been able to attract international donors and investors and other likeminded organizations. This has enabled us to developed high quality human resources, Infrastructure, technology and software for successful use and implementation to achieve our goal. As a pro-developmental organization, we are able to promote public-private-partnership envisaged by govt. Hatibari Health Home could be an illustrious example in this context, wherein socialization and rehabilitation of people with disabilities and deformities on account of leprosy, being successfully implemented.

We have always believed in innovation and renovation. Our Innovation approach to address the long felt large gap in the field of primary educations is reflected in BISWA innovative school functioning in many remote villages. Similarly our look out for renovation lead as to safeguard, improve an utilize existing traditional approaches of water conservation, brass and bell mental, folklore and music, weaving, terracotta and bamboo craft. These programs led to participation of rural women folk in large number. Incidentally last year the Nobel peace prize has been conferred to a grate personality Prof. Md. Yunus, of Grameen Bank fame, whose ethos, values and approaches converge with that of ours. It has really encourage us to believe that the world peace cannot be achieved without meaningful participation of progressive minded people in the affairs of un-served and under privileged rural population. It ultimately establishes that the Gandhian thought of peace and known violence is decreed and inevitable. We are concerned and relentlessly working towards fulfilling the goal targeted under Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of United Nations. We have a target of providing sanitation support to 200,000 poor and marginalized families to own household toilets with water facilities.

The actual design behind these entire all these exercise is to promote effective and efficient self government by people. BISWA Federations of SHGs, in fact are functioning as Mutual Benefit Trusts, and could be cited as ideal example in this context. In these years we have learnt from our own mistakes and inspired by our bit of success and innovations. But the quest for learning will remain with us forever. Meanwhile we could reach out to 14 states and covering all districts of Orissa and Chhatisgarh. And the process is still going on. We started as a district level organization at outset and at present identified ourselves at the national level. The next goal is obviously to reach out to other parts of the globe. This could not have been possible without the continuous Support of Governing Body members, Advisory Board Member, our colleagues, members of communities with whom we are working, donors, investors, bankers and financial institutions, altruist individuals and all the stakeholders at the grassroots level, who have reposed their confidence on us. We are thankful to different Ministry and departments of both State and Central Govt., people’s representatives and PRI members for their continuous support, guidance and cooperative attitude towards us. We are very much grateful to both print and electronic media for their continuous coverage of our activities and achievement.

We are expressing our gratitude to ‘Resouce Alliance’ and ‘Nand and Jeet Khemka foundation’ for conferring us India NGO Award 2007 for the East zone in Large Category.We are thankful to planet finance and ING Vysya Bank for conferring us Micro Insurance Award 2006-07 as Best Shine in the Micro-insurance Sector. We are thankful to all our compassionate donors those who supported and recognized our ideas, initiatives and contributions. I must thank the team of editors and development professionals, and all those who contribute in preparing this important document of BISWA. I sincerely thank their collective team effort and wish them great satisfaction in their work. Hope, users and readers of their report would now understand us and our work better. We also need their support to grow and expand our area of work.