By pooling their capital, labour and other resources, members are able to carry out profitable self-help activities which, if undertaken by individuals, would involve greater risk and effort. Groups are efficient receiving mechanisms . Well trained and motivated groups offer government and NGO development agencies cost savings in the delivery of inputs, services and facilities. Groups are learning laboratories . Members learn from their group promoter, and from each other, such skills as managing group enterprises, articulating, discussing and solving problems, and keeping accounts.
Groups help empower the rural poor .
Groups provide the poor with an effective instrument for participation in local decision-making, helping them to cooperate more fully in the development of their communities and to exert pressure, where necessary, to improve their conditions. Receiving systems Government and NGO delivery systems often have no matching receiving system through which development assistance can be channelled to the poor. As a result, development agencies find it easier to serve a minority of better-off farmers than large numbers of small scale producers. The group approach helps the poor to create their own receiving mechanisms. Thus, the poor win greater access to technical advice and production inputs, while the delivery agencies broaden the impact of their assistance.