The Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited (BSCL) on Wednesday completed the third phase of Peer Leaders Training Programme, in which 32 girls from 13 slums in the city took part.
This year the project targets to bring into its fold 76 new slums there by raising the total number of slums to 100 as previously it was limited to 24 slums.
The final module of the Phase III training focussed on various aspects of financial literacy.
It was heartening to hear from the girls the woes of families who have taken loans from various unconventional sources whereby the family virtually falls into a debt trap as the agents who come to collect their dues would not move from the house until they have collected the amount.
Thus many a time, the families had to take money again from other sources to virtually repay the first loan. The amount of interest paid for such loans could be as high as 30 per cent.
The girls sharing the pros and cons of loans said that though the loans help them in times of emergency but in many cases it makes the family vulnerable as many of them do not have fixed sources of income.
The girls also shared about families falling into the trap of schemes like chit fund where many families in hope of higher returns invested all their savings.
They said that they would like to create awareness amongst community members on the need to be cautious both while taking loans and also during investing their hard earned money.
Rasmita Nayak, Pragati Sathi Adolescent Group from Kalinga Basti said, “The training will certainly help the society in a long run as the peer leaders will help others in taking decisions in financial and other social matters.’’
Sandhya Nayak from Ashok Nagar said, “I have learnt a lot from the training programme.’’
These trained peer leaders will now go to the community and interact with other boys and girls of their age and hold fortnightly meetings.
Besides discussing with them about the lessons in the module provided to them, they would also take up various social issues and concerns of the community and work to resolve it.