With the intention to make awareness and capability among the partners of Haritha Asha Programme, an inter Project Exposure visit was organised in Silma, the project site of Ambikapur Diocese.
The Harith Asha programme is being initiated in five diocese of Chhattisgarh namely Raipur, Raigarh Jashpur, Jagadalpur and Ambikapur. Ten people from each project area visited Ambikapur project site. The field visit was conducted on 8 January 2007.
As part of the project implementation, Ambikapur Diocesan Social Service Society formed 23 men and 23 women SHGs in the project villages. Besides formation of SHGs the organisation has formed One Village Development Committee. They have made lot of changes in the village within three months. So by building up belief among the people in the project they have managed to form 44 farmers group in the project area. Following are the changes happened due to the implementation of the project:
Community harvesting of crop among the group members.
The entire village has been declared as liquor free and the community has decided to charge penalty for those who consume liquor, those who produce liquor and those who are informing will be given reward also. The community has taken the responsibility of cleaning the village at every weekend.
The groups are taking Rs10/ family/week to give financial aid to those children, who are going for higher education like engineering or medical. Collecting Rs.1 per family per month to give salary to the project animator after two years of project period.
Surprisingly all these decisions are taken by the community within an orientation of just three months. This is a wonderful model of community mobilisation and to transfer this quality to the other project areas the inter project visit has planned. There are five villages in the project area and the beneficiaries from each project area has presented chart on what is the present status of village now and the visualisation of the people of their village after two years of project period. This was a new learning for the people came for the study. At the end of the visit every body was convinced about the effect of community mobilisation in the project area and vowed to make the same in their areas.
This exposure was followed by a three day technical Training programme for the project staff. The training programme has inaugurated by Rev.Bishop Patras Mimnj, the welcome speech was done by Fr. Willium Urray. Mr.Rajesh Executive of NRM Caritas India facilitated the sessions along with Fr.William Urray Director of Social work Ambikapur and Mr. Basil Xess CRO for Chhattisgarh.