“I feel there is a need to share more information and skill development of our social development leaders to ensure that they continuously grow and are able to address the emerging issues”, shared by Most Rev. Lumen Monteiro, Chairman of Caritas India during his inaugural address at the 50th episode of the Development Dynamic Course (DDC).

The 25-day residential capacity building programme is organized for the development practitioners to develop their analytical skills to address the dynamic changes in the social development sector. This year, the training is organized by Caritas India in Canara Organization for Development & Peace (CODP) Mangaluru, Karnataka. 30 participants (21 Men and 9 women) across the country are participating in this course which started on August 20, 2019.

Chairman of Caritas India inaugurated the program with the lighting of the lamp. Msgr. Maxim Noronha, Vicar General of Mangaluru Diocese, Rev. Fr. Sebastian Fernandes, Director, KROSS, Bengaluru, Rev. Fr. Poly Varghese, Executive Director, Caritas India, Rev. Fr. Oswald Monteiro, Director, CODP, Mangaluru, Sr. Rose Pulikeel from Alleppey, joined the Bishop for lighting the lamp. Bishop Lumen shared the importance of the DDC programme and emphasized that it ensures that the local partner leaders get capacitated in various aspects of Social work. He also mentioned that as he travels across the country he got exposed to the dioceses and how they are reaching out to the communities in rural and unreached areas. While he gets much inspiration and satisfaction from such visits and interaction with partners and communities, who have transformed their lives through the facilitation of the local partners. He encouraged the participants to make the best use of this opportunity to learn from each other and every sessions’ inputs and all the deliberations so that they can apply them in their work for the betterment of marginalized and for the socially downtrodden communities.

Vicar General of Mangaluru Diocese, Msgr. Maxim Noronha and the chief guest in the inaugural session congratulated Caritas India for the 50th episode of DDC in Mangaluru and expressed his happiness and ensured all his support to Caritas India for all her programmes.  He highlighted the services that the church provides to society through health, education and social service sectors.

Fr. Poly Varghese, Executive Director of Caritas India, while introducing about the course, said that the participants of the previous DDC had given positive feedback which kept Caritas India to continue the course. He invited the participants to participate in the course actively as Caritas India is spending human and capital resources in this residential course. He also shared about the current scenario of challenging resource crunch from the overseas for the developmental activities in India.

Fr. Sebastian Fernandes, Director of KROSS who attended the same course in the year 1996, told that though he was not able to understand the relevance and usefulness while attending the DDC course, which was too hectic, he could really look back and understood the importance of the course while he was doing his master’s degree in social work. And later as Director of Social work in the diocese and the Director of Regional Forum. Hence, encourages all to actively participate in all the activities and learn from all the topics which will be introduced in the course.

Various modules have been developed dealing with various topics like Spirituality, CST principles, Strategy Plan and Key Strategic Pillars, Social Analysis, Gender perspectives and mainstreaming, Community Mobilization and people led Empowerment, Project Cycle Management, Result based management, Development communication skills, HA & DRR standards and frameworks, Safe migration and anti-human trafficking, Climate changes and Natural resources Management, Sustainable development Goals, Accounting, Legal compliance& budgeting, Constitutional Rights, Management of Development Organization, Policies & Initiatives, etc. will be dealt during the course.