Caritas India recently organised a Sabal phase – II orientation training for its partner’s staff to develop clarity on key result achievements, finalising Detail implementation plan, and bring clarity on various Government schemes under Agriculture, Health & Nutrition. The three days training between 6th – 8th April 2022 were attended by out-reach workers (ORWs), field trainers (FTs) and community facilitators (CFs).

The partners were given a session on Effective Project Management by the Programme Lead, Robin George. In his session, he spoke in length about the key terminologies of project management and various tools used for effective process management. He broadly developed an understanding of leadership skills and powers, scope management, total quality management (TQM), communication management and project management process. Some of the tools that can be used for increasing the effectiveness of the project and productivity include decomposition, rolling wave planning and working in a controlled environment.

Mukund Deshmukh, the Asst. Programme Lead helped the partners to develop clarity on the importance of Detailed Implementation Planning (DIP) for measuring the project progress against the proposed planned activities. He emphasized strictly following the DIPs and timely measuring the changes with respect to result achievement, cost and activities.

Taking a session on agriculture and good governance initiatives, Mukund facilitated strategizing and developing the consensus with the Sabal team for achieving the output level initiatives proposed in the project. The key proposed areas of the intervention included MGNREGA for increasing employment opportunities, increased participation of the community in governance initiatives especially women’s participation, formation and strengthening of women farmers groups and initiating farm-based livelihood initiatives and ensuring food security by extending the food crop and millet crop production coverage.

Health and nutrition are the thematic importance of the program which was explained by Robin George. He covered all the output level activities falling under the Health and Nutrition aspect and with the mutual support of the Sabal team the key strategies for achievement were finalized. The key areas covered under health and nutrition include – improving the household dietary diversity score (HDDS) of the household by increasing household food accessibility (HFA) and impacting positively the IDDS of 6 – 23-month children and WDDS of pregnant, lactating and adolescent girls. He stressed the implementation of the life-cycle approach as a comprehensive model for ensuring food and nutrition security among the Korku families. The partners were also oriented on the monitoring and evaluation tools.