RASTA started working in district of Wayanad, since in 1987. Initially its programme was designed to complement the activities of Poverty alleviation of the Government for Rural Development at Grass Root level. Over the period, on the basis of learning and reflection, the focus of the Programme shifted from implementation of activities by RASTA to enable people to take up Programmes by themselves. The beneficiaries become stakeholders and decision makers in development process. This offered the potential for productive synergies and mutual learning between the sectors and different partners involved.
Engaging with Watershed Development activities, started promoting participatory methodologies for identification of issues and pressing problems. For sustainability of the Watershed, livelihood activities were introduced, this further gained importance with the co-opting of Women SHGs. These groups’ activities saw a flip, when they were involved in preparing project plan for the activity selected. With saturation of activities on farm and farming sector, RASTA gradually switched these women to Non Farm activities. This gave them an insight for planning an activity outside the farming sector.
Necessary exposure was given to the women for switching over to a new track for livelihood. This builds the confidence of women adopting new trend for gaining meaningful employment. Because of this exposure, SHGs came in forefront to start new ventures. They evolved plans for making venture successful through institutional training and guidance of successful entrepreneurs. Various ventures for income generation activities were started by the SHGs, for their livelihood, paper bags units, confectionary units, ready-made units, mushroom cultivation units. All units took loans from the savings of the Groups for starting their units, were quiet successful, some of these were replicated by others.