Tsunami left behind huge and widespread destruction in the coastal villages of Kerala. Besides the loss of human lives, fishers also suffered loss of their ‘livelihood capitals’. In order to provide relief and rehabilitation to the affected, Department of Fisheries, Kerala implemented multiple programs, which were christened under a common livelihood program named “Theeramythri” under the Society for Assistance to Fisherwomen (SAF). The Theeramythri programme facilitates and handholds fisherwomen to engage in gainful selfemployment for their economic and social emancipation. Over the last decade SAF carried out commendable actions with around thousand enterprise groups with minimal initial outlays of less than 0.2 million rupees. SAF extends their financial and technical support right from the selection of enterprises, capacity building, branding and marketing, technology improvement, networking and monitoring. The present study gauges the empowerment levels of fisherwomen involved in these groups under the two time periods viz. , prior to joining the society and the current status. The study identified that more than 300 million rupees has been provided as grant to these groups and these groups had been instrumental in empowering the fisherwomen in Kerala. The study also established the pivotal role SAF plays in achieving the goals of empowering fisherwomen and developing sustainable and commercially viable business models.

Women empowerment, SAF and activity groups, structural equation modelling, principal component analysis