Government of Karnataka has been promoting self help groups of poor women in both urban and rural areas under the Stree Shakti scheme. IDF has been providing services to the scheme in concurrent monitoring and evaluation of the scheme implementation covering all the blocks of Karnataka state and advising through KSWDC better implementation of the scheme through the Department of Women and Child Welfare. During FY 09-10, the study based on random sampling covers a universe of 5000 Urban Stree Shakti SHGs and 1.32 lakh (0.13 million) Rural Stree Shakti SHGs. In addition, a study on backward and forward linkages to support and sustain the income generation activities (IGA) by the members of these SHGs is also taken up.