 Dear learners, I welcome you all to the course on skill development of the women in self-help groups which is a four credit course at certificate level. As you know, being a citizen of a democratic country, everyone has the basic right to live with dignity and enjoying all the opportunities guaranteed by the Indian constitution in equally. For making people empowered or mobilizing the capacity, various attempts have been made by the government from time to time. The formation of self-help groups is one of the major components under the scheme of Sarno, Jyentig, Grams or Uzgar, Ujjana. Self-help groups have been able to mobilize the small savings of the people on weekly or monthly basis and help the people to start their own lending process or enterprises. If we see the history of self-help groups, it has found that it was in Bangladesh, Dr. Mohammad Yunas who is a Bangladesh's social entrepreneur, banker, economist and civil society leader developed this concept for which he got the Nobel Peace Prize. The basic objective of the self-help groups is that the members of the self-help groups can effectively recycle the resources generated by themselves in the group in order to meeting their emergency credit needs. Women's self-help groups plays the dominant role as the major members of self-help groups is in India as well as enters South Asia. The self-help groups may consist of 10 to 20 members and in case of minor irrigation and in case of disabled persons and the difficult areas like hilly, desert areas, these numbers may be minimum of 5. Self-help groups should also be drawn from the BPL list approved by the Grams over. Therefore, it is the right time to see whether the formation and nursery of self-help groups are able to make women economically empowered or not. Are they able to enhance their small enterprises? Whether they are able to get their desired or decent standard of livelihood opportunities or not. But in reality, there are people who are still marginalized, deprived and exploited for accessing their required needs and demand and it mostly happened in case of women as a whole. Lack of relevant information and up-to-date knowledge and skills, poor participation of women in economic activities, lack of power and control in decision making process and finally lack of awareness. In availing opportunities and freedom are some of the basic factors for which women have to stay subordinate to men or their counterparts in a patriarchal society. By acknowledging this fact, it is the need of the hour to make women empowered and economically mobilized by giving them some need-based training for their skill development. Therefore, through this course, an attempt has been made to make women aware of their rights and duties, equipping them with some need-based skills and motivating them to enhance their own enterprises. Just have a brief look at the course. The duration of the course is 12 weeks and if we see the structure of the course, some e-content or SLMs will be provided to the learners using through asynchronous technologies. The course is divided into four models. The first model of the course contains the units on developing the knowledge of the learners with relevant information and the second model is based on the domain of motivation where some case studies are elaborated for their benefits and the third model of this course are designed to develop the awareness level of women and model 4 is based on some training and skill development courses that help the learners to become entrepreneurial. Besides the SLM, there will be 40 videos covering the domain of knowledge, motivation, awareness, training or demonstration on the part of the learners. Thus, after completing the course, learners will get the certificate for which they get the formal recognition from the host institution. The certificate will help them immensely in applying for loans in the bank or so on. Apart from economically capable, they shall also be able to participate in the decision making process as well as nation building process. Thank you.