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Project Vikas envisages a new, innovative, path-breaking and holistic, community-based welfare project with special emphasis on women and children in rural Tamilnadu. It proceeds from a recognition of the fact that welfare programmes administered and supported by Government, though substantial in their financial outlays and extensive in their geographic and organizational reach, suffer important weaknesses in the organization and methods at their cutting edge public interface These are reflected in ineffective person to person communication, on the part of grass root levl workers, resulting in turn, in inadequate response and involvement from the targetted groups. The results in terms of quality and reach of critical welfare components like literacy, education, health and hygiene, socio-economic benefits etc, are consequently not commensurate with the levels of effort and investment in programmes in these areas. On a smaller scale, this is true of the efforts of many NGOs as well.
Relief Foundation is a Chennai based NGO that has done extensive work with women and children in the villages and village level teachers, health workers, community leaders and programme sponsors from Industry and Commerce, and service volunteers. Relief Foundation has initited pioneering approaches in cross-sectoral cooperation and in networking NGOs to give them added strength and direction to welfare causes.. It has launched innovative approaches to bring protection succour and a social healing touch to orphans, runaway children, deserted children, school dropouts, and children on the fringe of lives of begging, delinqency and crime. In recognition of this, Relief Foundatuion has been assigned important responsibilities in these areas of activity by the Department of Social Defence, Government of Tamilnadu. In the light of its extensive many-sided field experience, Relief Foundation is now convinced that in the pursuit of welfare programmes, we now need new and holistic strategies calling for involvement in and support from all the critical segments of society, as set out in this proposal.
CONCEPTUAL APPROACH :
Any holistic approach to social welfare programmes for the People must flow from intelligent mobilization and utilization of resources and support potentials of the Market and State Sectors. Our approach is therefore to :
(a) TAP the employment
and training potential of the institutions of Industry &
Commerce (the Market Sector) and also the resources they deploy for social
causes.
(b) LEVERAGE
the organisational and financial resources allocated by governments (the
State Sector) for social welfare programmes, especially for women and children
and specially those relating to Literacy,Education,Training, Employment
and Health.
(c) MOBILIZE
the support and involvement of the People in implementation of welfare
programmes, and specifically raise village level leadership and organizations
to maintain and sustain all these programmes. The motive force for progress
must ultimately spring from every mother, teacher and service functionary
or volunteer from every home, school and community centre in the villages.
(d) ENHANCE the
quality and extend the reach of existing welfare institutions , services
and programmes, by enhancing the knowledge and skills of the service functionaries
at the cutting edge.
IMPLEMENTATION APPROACH :
The effort to enhance quality and extend reach of critical services ( Item (d) above ) will concentrate on the following :
(a) Volunteers to handle Literacy programmes
especially addressed to women
(b) Teachers in village schools in respect
of all Educational activities.
(c) Volunteers from different professions
to handle Training of village youth in new skills for new types of rural
employment and entrepreneurship in areas like farm products, food industries,
social forestry, horticulture, animal husbandry etc.
(d) Village Health Workers and Volunteers
handling all Health related programmes, especially for women and children
and especially those directed to the prevention of disease and disability.
These personnel will be provided with and trained in the use of computers with specially designed, Tamil-based content material relevant to the programmes handled by them. Striking results may be expected to flow from the exposure of both functionaries and beneficiaries to the full power of IT-bases skills and methodologies. This approach has been field tested and found to hold significant promise.
This proposal envisages a two-stage programme as follows:
Stage I : A Pilot Project lasting 6 months, to demonstrate and establish the viability and efectiveness of this approach, in a selected village in Tamilnadu.
Stage II : A Workshop where participants in the Pilot Project will present their experiences, results and recommendations, to determine whether and how the Pilot Project can be expanded into a Programme with a wider reach.
PILOT PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION :
Relef Foundation has initiated implementation
of the Pilot Project, with :
(a) Selecting
of one village, Illalur, in Chengalpattu District, where the Project is
being implemented.
(b) Defining
the specific programmes to be addressed and defining the activity
structure and time-table of the activities.
(c) Identifying
the functionaries and volunteers who will spearhead the programme activities
in their defined areas of responsibility in each village.
(d) Procuring
two computers with relevant software for the village and positioning them,
one in a school and the oterh in a community centre in each village.
(e) Arranging
with our partner-NGO, Vidya Vrikshah to
(i) Train the
above functionaries and volunteers in the use of computers with special
Tamil-based content for
all welfare programmes.
(ii) Design and develop
the special Tamil-based content.
(f) Implementing the
Project in the village with the help of our partner-NGO, Mentors Trust.
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