BEST PRACTICES:

BACKGROUND:

ADP Malda came into existence in 1996 prior to which Samshi Community Development Project was in existence. The ADP in its original form covered 6 Grampanchayat covering 120 villages. Later from 2001 onwards after the midterm evaluation the villages have been brought down to existing 92 villages in the 6 Grampanchayat.

Vulnerability context:

The ADP target population comprised of Scheduled tribe (Santals){42%}, Scheduled caste {31%}, other back ward caste (OBC){6%} and general {21%}. If we see their wealth ranking 5% falls under rich category, 26% falls under middle category and 69% falls under poor category. Under this 69% major source of income is agriculture labor, unskilled day labor. From this category the seasonal migration takes place and under this category around 53% of the population have land less than 1 acres.

Another vulnerability factor affecting the area is various hazards. Slow and sometimes rapid onset of flood disturbs the life of people every year. Draught is another emerging hazard, which has affected the life of people. (This year the major part of district has been declared as draught hit area by government.) Similarly cyclone, hailstorm hits the agriculture every year. Malaria and kalazar are other health hazards loading more vulnerability in the lives of people. All these are making the people more vulnerable and susceptible to resilience.

As per the NFHS 2 finding 50% of the population of Malda is illiterate and it is clearly evident in the target area. The education quality of the district is also very poor. A study finding of ASER says that Malda has school drop out of 7.6% when the national scenario is 4.4%. Child marriage and child labor is rampant in the area and the vulnerability towards HIV and AIDS is increasing day by day.

All these are leading to the macro issues of:

1. Poor economic status of the people.

2. Poor health

3. Poor education

World Vision India, ADP Malda has been working to address the underlying causes of these issues. Various approaches of development are intermingled in addressing the core issues. Participatory development approach, Rights Based approach, child rights approach, sustainable Development approach, gender and Development, Livelihood strategy.

Poverty analyses have shown that people’s ability to escape from poverty is critically dependent upon their access to assets (Capitals). Different livelihood activities have different requirements, but the general principal is that those who are amply endowed with assets (Capitals) are more likely to be able to make positive livelihood choices. Thus the project’s focus is on accumulation of assets (capitals) in the given intervening framework. In the process of accumulating the capitals all the above developmental approaches are brought into practice.

For our clear understanding of the intervention I would like to put forward five domains where Project has been working at. I will try to reflect our intervening measures under these five domains (Capitals). Under these five domains World Vision’s strategic priorities are also intermingled. These capitals are:

1. Human Capital

2. Natural Capital

3. Social Capital

4. Financial Capital

5. Physical Capital

Human Capital:

Under this capital the project helps the people to accumulate assets like health and nutrition, education of the children, information sharing, various training related with accumulation of the capital. For accumulating health asset (focus is on child growth) project has taken the approach of Community Based Growth Promotion where it is not only monitoring of the growth of the child below 2 years but also promoting growth among the mothers. The intervention includes Behaviour change in relation to breast-feeding, immunization, and food preparation.

Similarly, under Early Childhood Development the emotional, psychological needs of the children upto 5 years are cater for. It is also community based in nature. Under this activity it is not only the participating children’s development but also the development of the parents are also looked for.

Life school for transformation development is a major activity centered on promoting values among the children. Similarly, addressing the social evil of alcoholism, ADP through its activity Alcoholic agape could bring 12 alcoholics to normal life situation. Similarly ADP is addressing the issues of child marriage through various awareness activities, person-to-person talk. This year two-child marriage has been reported to be stopped by the intervention of ADP staff.

Natural Capital:

People do not have control over the natural disaster but can prepare for such kind of disaster. Thus project has Community based Disaster Preparedness project in implementation where the capacity of the people is developed in mitigating the hazards with the expected outcome of lessening the vulnerability.

Water development is another area where project is investing on with the expected outcome of reducing hunger, generating work opportunity and attaining food security in the target population.

Promotion of organic farming, forestry is other activities ADP is fostering for the accumulation of this capital.

Social capital:

It is a proven fact while implementing any projects it is imperative to address the issues of sustainability. Social sustainability is taken as a high priority area ADP is envisaging. Thus various CBOs are formed and trained. The CBO structure of the target community is like this: Family Forum (FF) at family level. Representative from each family forum comprises the VDC executive body. At the grass root level (family level) all the other bodies like SHG, Children Clubs, and youth Clubs, farmers clubs are found. These small bodies also get represented at the VDC level. For better linkages with Government bodies and other agencies these CBOs are registered under societies act.

Financial capital: The capital refers to regular inflow of income other than earned income. This is the area where ADP has no direct role to play since it refers to regular pension etc. from outer sources. Indirectly, there is regular inflow of income from the thrift business, monthly membership revenue, and loan refund.

Physical Capital:

Various physical capitals have been accumulated in the community ADP works. Among them the road, School buildings, community halls, disaster centers, sanitation, water pumps, tractors, threshers, rice mills, bridges, housings, tube wells, open wells, check dams.

Lesson learnt:

Various needs have different approaches. The overall objective of project is to implement effective approaches in combating macro issues. The programme has experienced stumbling blocks of which the major are poor community participation, lack of political will, poor planning and targeting of the beneficiaries and inefficient monitoring. Secondly because of increase in migration rates, as it is seen in the past few months, string men are not found in the villages because of which activities which can foster their life especially accumulation of physical capital, could not be implemented. Because of the poor accumulation of human capital macro impact activities could not be planned and implemented.

For future intervention the suggested model of intervention is:

1. Proper targeting of the programme beneficiaries

2. Community involvement in all aspects of programming from planning till evaluation.

3. Inculcate good value system

1. Economic Development. This intervention area includes Micro-Enterprise Development (MED), household income-generation, vocational training, and any other strategy that enables households and communities to increase and better manage household income. This surplus can then be used as a safety net during economic hard times, as well as an engine to sustain community structures in the long term. It is a key to sustaining the improvements in the community won at such high cost in terms of time and effort, not to mention financial and material costs, over the 10-15 year life span of a typical ADP. Without this increased margin of disposable income, the community will not be able to afford the benefits of the sectoral interventions and community institutions introduced in the ADP zone, after World Vision has phased out of the development process. Research has shown that targeting women (rather than men) has the greatest impact on reducing child mortality rates.