Community Group Dynamics and Leadership Skills

Mobilisation on Rights and Entitlements:

In continuation with an intense people centred advocacy process since last phase to highlight the local issues of the community, a positive environment has been built and the federations are now taking active initiatives to address the pertinent and pressing issues of their respective areas. A comprehensive baseline data has been created for this process in all respect and analysed to act on issue based work. The capacities of the selected cadres have been strengthened through training and orientation programmes to carry out the process. Regular quarterly review of the PCA process is also organised to assess the action agenda and inform all the villages to keep special attention to carry out the agendas.

Dealing with Social Issues:

During the process review, the cadres design action plans to highlight the issue of safe drinking water, deforestation, sustainable agriculture, issues relating to NREGA, anti-liquor initiatives, Low Participation in PS & GS, Primary education, HIV/AIDS, Migration, and other women & child related issues. They take opinions of other stakeholders and discuss the challenges they face while trying to address the issues. The Gram Sangathans and their federations bring the above issues to the notice and knowledge of appropriate authorities like PRIs, Revenue Department, Block and district officials. Responding to such public action, the respective government authorities have started addressing some of the above issues.

Strengthening partnerships:

CYSD has been strengthening the participation base of one hundred and thirty one partners in its network with significant expansions in the extensive programme coverage. Together the partners reach out to more than two thousand villages in eleven districts. One of the focal areas of the DRCs is to build capacities of partners in order to facilitate Village and Panchayat level micro-planning.

A total of four thousand, seven hundred and four leaders have been oriented in the current financial year, of which two thousand, two hundred and twelve are women. They have gained thematic competencies on different aspects of local self governance and are now conduction field level training programmes on different aspects of local self governance system, micro level planning, RTI, and NREGA/ OREGS covering 11 districts.

While the intensive orientation at the village level has resulted in increased participation of people in the Palli and Gram Sabhas, as part of the extensive approach, the three District Resource Centres have collaborated with their partner organisations to organise orientation programs on the Right to Information Act for different stakeholders such as PRI members, CBO/ SHG leaders, village level frontline workers and volunteers.

District Planning Committees (DPC):

These government formed committees, consisting of Panchayat and government officials, are set up to integrate rural and urban planning. Micro-level planning models are shared with the DPC members and they are encouraged to integrate these models into their district level planning. Informal discussions are organized to ensure better understanding of their roles and responsibilities. A series of regional workshops are organized to facilitate discussions amongst participants to improve techniques and tools in citizens' participation related activities, and to exchange ideas and lessons learnt among the participants in different regions of the world. Relevant experiences of the organizations participating in the workshops are presented and regularly updated on the website.

District level advocacy meetings are organized among the members of community organizations and NGOs, farmers, and government officials, to highlight the concern of the farmers. The findings generate meaningful discussions on the need to create a link between the government and civil society organizations for the proper implementation of government schemes and programmes.