Ushamath Mahila Self reliant cooperative Mahasangh Ltd. (UMM) Is federation of women SHGs, established in 2005 to meet the financial service needs of the poor clients/people living in one of the most underserved areas of Uttarakhand state, structured as a community based microfinance institution UMM’s mandate has been to focus on the solutions that provide direct socio economic improvement to the marginalized and low – income households.
UMM has been involved in rendering a range of affordable financial services for the clients especially those who remained beyond the reach of the formal financial institutions and often exploited by the local money lenders. UMM has decided to enter this broad thematic area.
As an institution UMM is being promoted by Appropriate Technology India (ATI) having its head office at Guptkashi and operational office in different District of Uttarakhand. ATI is involved in promoting Livelihood and Natural Resource Management in an extensive manner while promoting livelihoods, ATI could notice the constraint of the credit as an input for the clients as the local financial institutions took a lot of time to come forward for SHGs bank linkages having reflected on the issue, the ATI took a strategic decision for creating alternative community based institution that will cater to the credit needs of the clients on sustainable manner. Thus, the Ushamath Mahila Mahasangh Ltd. came into being and got registered under the Uttaranchal Self Reliant Cooperative Act 2003.