Capacity Building
From End Of Poverty
4. Capacity Building:
One of the important activities planned to strengthen the capacities and capabilities of POs is by enhancing the knowledge of their leaders with the latest information on vital issues hindering the development of their communities.
Once the awareness is raised and positive attitude is developed among the target people, the formation of people’s organisation at community level to take up the developmental programmes on their own is initiated. It is promoted to bring cohesiveness among the target families and to enhance the local leadership to overcome their difficulties and to find solutions. In the process, lack of managerial skills, knowledge and abilities have become the major obstacles for effective functioning of these people’s organisations. Hence, right from the formation stage efforts are planned to inculcate the necessary skills, knowledge, capacities and capabilities to effective management of the people’s organisation and execute the programmes in an efficient manner.
The PO would be strengthened and supported especially at the initial stages and helped to tackle internal problems. The PO’s need some direction and guidance to know how to go about solving the problem and the leaders need much encouragement and training. Training camps are intended to strengthen the village leaders who in turn will lead the POs more effectively.
The office bearers are the key actors in any society. Success of any society depends on the active performance, commitment and dedication of the team of office bearers. The team of office bearers should have zeal towards the development of their village and they need to work honestly to make it possible. Through the intensive leadership training camps for these office bearers, ASSIST has been successful in promoting good leadership qualities among the villagers and as such they are being respected by the entire community as their representatives. However, what is lacking is the sufficient knowledge on various aspects. Leader should have the complete knowledge and information so that he or she could gain respect and command in the community. Leader should be able to tell others and he or she should not look for some other person either for information or to take a proper decision. After studying the present status of the villages, it is desired that the office bearers of these societies should be upgraded with more information and required knowledge to attain the development of their respective communities.
The camps will be organised in their cluster base centres so that participants will feel free to share their thoughts and learn new things, subjects of common interest/litigation will be discussed, problems will be analysed and solutions for the same will be planned. Office bearers are given an intensive training on the topics: Leadership, Government Programmes, Documentation, Project identification, planning, execution, monitoring, evaluation and follow-up and Group dynamics and conflict resolution. (For more details on the topics covered; refer ANNEX 3)
In addition to the leadership training camps, in order to further strengthen the capacities and capabilities of the office bearers of People’s Organisations the exposure visits are organised for these leaders to the successful villages. These visits provide an opportunity for these office bearers to interact directly with the similar leaders of successful People’s Organisations and to learn the skills and techniques in executing the developmental programmes. Group dynamics, conflict resolution and working with the government departments are some of the crucial elements which could be learnt through these exposure visits.
If it is assumed and agreed that the POs are the real vehicles of change, much effort must be put to strengthen them. In addition to the training camps, opportunities should be created so that they could gain real confidence by solving the problems on their own which have been obstacles for their development. The PO’s will be motivated to raise common fund in the form of savings and small contributions from the target families and the same will be used to take up small-scale developmental programmes on their own in their respective communities. In order to inculcate and encourage the habit of savings and raising common fund for solving their long-pending problems on their own, the project plans to take up entry point activities in the formation stage of people’s organisations. Under these activities, the project intends to provide matching grant to the POs to the sum equal to the amount raised by the target families. However, this amount would be used only to cater the community needs such as community centres, water and sanitation works, infrastructure development to the schools, drains, roads and electrification etc.
