Caritas Australia supported, “Rebuilding Lives of Migrant Workers” is a recently launched programme of Caritas India and is in its initial phase for the first year. As part of contextual analysis for the initial phase, a baseline survey will be conducted in the intervention areas to understand the situation of migrant workers in order to measure the programme indicators.

In this regard, a one-day orientation training programme for the volunteers was organised at the Raipur state office of Caritas India in Chhattisgarh. The focus was to orient the volunteers on the programme objectives and impart an understanding of the baseline survey to ensure accurate and error-free data collection.

Prior to the orientation exercise, 10 village volunteers from the Arang block of Raipur were selected from all the ten villages who were then engaged in the programme. Following this, the volunteers attended the orientation programme along with the community educators and programme associates. All 10 volunteers signed the volunteer engagement letter to participate in the survey. The objectives of the baseline survey were clearly explained to the participants and a demonstration of the form was provided both in English as well as Hindi followed by discussions on the survey.

After the orientation program, a discussion was held regarding the sample size and selection procedures with the community educators. In this discussion, the volunteers were asked to conduct a session on field testing in the nearby villages in presence of the programme team. While the programme team would note down all the issues that would take place during piloting which would then be discussed in the next online session of orientation to avoid any discrepancies at the earliest possible stage of the survey.

A feedback session was organised at the end, to note any clarifications from the volunteers. Some notable points raised by the volunteers included: –

• If the respondent has a joint family, then which members should participate in the survey?
• The volunteers assumed that asking questions about their family members might raise a doubt in the mind of the community members.
• The volunteers expressed that it becomes difficult to make them understand the programme intentions and survey objectives and most of the time they get scared about the fact that people want to take away things they already have.

The best time to conduct the survey of the respondents was decided and all the volunteers said they will adjust with the respondent’s free time as it would take nearly 40 minutes to complete the whole survey sheets.

In addition to finalizing the timelines, it was decided that the data collection will be done by the volunteers while the project team will do the data checking and validation.