Mein Pragati is CRISIL Foundation’s flagship project, empowering socially and economically disadvantaged sections of society by strengthening their financial capabilities. The program strives to help participants make informed financial choices and develop a greater sense of control over their finances, culminating in improved financial well-being. Establishing a robust cadre of community workers, Sakhis, for continual doorstep handholding support The Sakhi cadre has been created to drive long-term behavioral change in managing money by addressing last-mile constraints in accessing financial services; improving households’ access to government schemes and programs; and strengthening livelihood access for women in households. Over the past year, CRISIL has developed best practices to build capacities of Sakhis. They’ve defined criteria to select Sakhis and devised a robust orientation-cum-induction program to hone their soft skills along with knowledge of key concepts of financial products and services. The best practices also include:

• Creating a ‘basket of services’ offered by Sakhis based on extensive field research
• Training Sakhis to provide and/or facilitate financial linkages at the last mile
• Developing a rate card for the basket of services, whereby Sakhis recover a nominal fee for their services

The Impact created includes 500+ active sakhis 10,000+ financial linkages, 7500+ government scheme linkages, 5000+ livelihood linkages, 32500+new pan cards.