In the Mahila Samakhya Programme, the empowerment of women is seen as critical precondition for the participation of women and girls in the education process. The pricipal strategy identified for ensuring women's participation is through moblilising and organising them into collectives. It was decided that the best way to achieve this would be to follow a strategy where the programme would not lay down either tragets to be achieved or specific agenda to be folloed, but would take its programmatic cues from the women in the collectives.