“Every member of the SHG is responsible for the monthly savings and we collectively invest in the planned income generation program for our better livelihood,” answered one of the SHG member to Fr. Jolly Puthenpura, the Assistant Executive Director of Caritas India. Fr. Jolly was visiting the Swaraksha Anti-Human Trafficking (AHT) program under the Lucknow Diocese.

He was interacting with the SHG member to understand the contribution of SHG in their lives. He questioned the members about their profit earnings ratio from the cloth stitching and other alternative sources of income to gauge the support of SHG and its savings. These women were from Shram Bihar Community SHG and stayed in this area for ages and their family people work as freight workers to deliver heavy loads. Fr. Jolly also met the SHG women running petty shops and grocery shops promoted by the Swaraksha program. He inquired about their daily earnings and advised them to save for further expansion of their shops. These income generation livelihood opportunities were promoted by the Lucknow Dioceses to give an edge to the vulnerable population to fight poverty and economic deprivation.

Fr. Jolly met all the three partner organizations and shared that the main component of the AHT program is the beneficiary community, implementing organization, staff, international community, and donor intentional requirements. He was emphasizing the importance and role of each stakeholder in the success of the program. Thematic lead, AHT and safe migration Leeza spoke on the need and rationale behind the AHT program, and how to move forward with the next phase using learnings from the last 4-years of field experience.

All three partners shared the major achievements of the last year. They shared about the linkages to create awareness at the community level, networking with border and local police, creation of income generation programs, increased livelihood income, access to entitlements, formation of CFCs, Child Parliaments, SMC, VLCPC and youth groups along with rescue and repatriation status of the trafficked victims.

The team also discussed some key challenges related to the expectation of direct support by the community, threats faced from traffickers, political agencies, absence of shelters for Human trafficking victims and survivors and lack of good governance and accountability at the ground level which sometimes create a difficult situation to operate.

The platform was used by all three partners to plan activities for the next phase of the program. Program Associate Swaraksha AHT program facilitated the session with several inputs and suggestions from the Caritas team. A session on Advocacy was taken to share and why and how part. Citizen Voice and Action a Tool on Advocacy was also shared with all the participants in which the participants were oriented that how communities can be engaged in the advocacy process for their basic rights and entitlements from the government.

The resource person highlighted the three Phase of CVA which speaks on enabling citizen engagement, engagement via community gathering and Improving services and influencing Policies. Several components under these three phases were shared with the participants and how to monitor the process of CVA in the communities was also shared through finalizing the Action Plan, setting the monitoring standard, preparing the scorecards, Building Network and coalition.