SUCCESSFUL MODELS, PROCESSES APPROACHES AND STRATEGIES

Grain Banks:

The community then maintains the grain bank, which allows them to borrow grains at nominal interest rates at the time of food crisis. The Orientation Programs equips the community members with the complete process, starting from the formation, through procurement to management of the grain banks.

Community Farming:

Group farming, alternatively known as community farming, is a livelihood approach conceived by CYSD in 2000. It consists of a group of small and marginal farmers, and landless poor in a village who work together to utilize the cultivable waste lands or under-utilized lands to earn their livelihoods. The participating farmers can either take community or individual land on lease; or they can pool land of individual farmers in a contiguous patch for such farming. In promoting group farming, CYSD has always emphasized active participation of the community members in identifying beneficiaries and planning crop cycle for coming years.

The people have been practicing vegetable cultivation through this model and with the facilitation of CYSD. The benefit of this model is that even the landless can be included in this activity and they have a better bargaining power while selling of the product. The farmers themselves raise the seedlings in the community nurseries and others buy it by taking loan from the groups. The individual farmers return the amount to the group after the harvest, thus creating a revolving fund ensuring the sustainability of the groups and the activity.

Benefits of Community Farming: Marginal and landless farmers are encouraged to take up community farming by jointly cultivating large areas of land, including wasteland through shared resources, as seeds, tools, and labor.

Rural Livelihoods Training Centers (RLTC):

“Seeing is Believing”, the saying is especially true when it comes to communicating optimal utilization of resources either through the introduction of new products, in a change in management practices or in exploring alternate sources of livelihood. The community members to whom these are communicated will be especially interested in seeing the result of these changes. Although providing educational and training opportunities and technical guides and manuals is valuable, seeing a project first hand is invaluable.

In this context, CYSD started its Rural Livelihood Training Centre (RLTC) at four locations, based at Boipariguda block of Koraput district, Hemgiri block of Sundargarh district and Patana block of Keonjhar district and Tangi Choudwar of Cuttack district of Orissa. These strategically located to serve four backward zones of the state.  The backward zones include the districts of Koraput, Nabarangapur, Malkangiri, Rayagada, Sundergarh, Deograh, Mayurbhanj, Keonjhar and interior blocks of Cuttack. The use of RLTC is a way to help accomplish the objectives of communication, education and monitoring through (i) demonstration of best practices, (ii) creation of a resource base, and (iii) development of market linkages.

Micro-Planning- Access to Resources:

Land:

CYSD has been playing a facilitating role to help the community access land under various government schemes such as Vasundhara, FRA etc. The Baseline Surveys followed by empowering the community members on schematic provisions and the process to avail those schemes, to demand their rights and take up application follow-ups, has been CYSD prerogative.

Credit:

Promoted by CYSD to provide credit, financial training and support to promote micro-enterprises, the Swayamshree Micro-Credit Services (SMCS) is a not-for-profit micro finance institution in Orissa which focuses on SHG-driven livelihood promotion. The SHGs are further facilitated to take credit from various micro-finance institutions like banks, SMCS etc. and to take up internal credit for productive purposes to rotate the funds on time to earn profit out of it. The SHGs are then linked to various Government schemes like SGSY for taking up various IGAs.

Employment:

CYSD encourages employment generation at the grassroots by linking them to MGNREGS of the Government. For this, CYSD runs various orientation programmes and develops IEC materials in the form of leaflets, wall writings and year calendars in local languages, comprising elements of local culture, speeding up the work of the Gram Panchayats and Gram Sabha(s), assigned to play a critical role in the implementation of the scheme with mandate for ensuring benefits to reach out all sections of the community.