Caritas India and Khandwa Diocesan Social Services (KDSS) jointly organised a half-day regional civil society organisation meeting with all the NGOs working in the Khandwa region of Madhya Pradesh. 11 NGOs were invited for the networking meeting out of which 8  attended, namely MMK Foundation, Jan Sahaas Foundation, Divyaang Ekta Kalyan Manch, Divyaang Gati Shakti Manch, Vishwas, Navjeevan Trust, Khandwa Diocesan Social Services and Caritas India. In total 18 NGO representatives actively participated in the programme.

Mr. Robin George, Programme Lead – Caritas India laid down the overarching objectives of the meeting including:

• Discussion on the value of working together within the region.
• Discussion on the potential benefits, challenges and limitations faced during the networking and partnerships.
• Formation of the cooperation committee for Khandwa (CCK) thereby identifying networking representatives from each organization.

All the NGO representatives briefly shared various initiatives and programmes run by their respective organisation.

In his inaugural address Fr. Jayan Alex, Director – KDSS appreciated all the NGO partners for attending the event. He asserted that as an essential component of civil society, NGOs should be fully devoted to working on concerning issues including human rights, social justice, improved literacy, health and nutrition, humanitarian relief, and so on.  Quoting the message of Mother Teresa “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love”, Fr. Jayan emphasised the importance of coming together through the platform of CSO networking.

Mr. Sushil Francis, Programme Executive – KDSS, facilitated the session to understand the expectations of all the NGO representatives from the networking platform. As a consensus following points were proposed –

• Collaborating for enabling the community members to tap the benefits of various government schemes and benefits.
• Working on partnership strategies viz. knowledge and information sharing, exchange learning visits and expertise sharing, issue-based campaigns and interfacing with government functionaries.
• Regular CSO meetings and exchanges for effective communication.
• Identifying the NGO representatives as networking coordinators for sustaining the platform.

Mr. Mukund Deshmukh, Asst. Programme Lead – Caritas India, facilitated the session on the challenges faced in “sustaining the networking platform”, which was bought up considering various challenges encountered such as funding limitations for organising such meetings, the vested interest of the organisations, expectations of the funding agencies, coordination, and communication issues. He also spoke in length about the benefits of networking viz. exchange visits and knowledge sharing, collaborative policy level advocacy and campaigning etc.

Towards the end, a way forward plan was laid out by Mr. Robin and Ms. Rajkishori which was then finalised in consensus with all the NGO representatives. The plan stipulated the following recommendations –

• The meeting will be organised on a quarterly basis and the next meeting will be organised in the month of August facilitated by Divyaang Gati Shaki Manch.
• Formation of Coordination Committee of Khandwa (CCK) and proposing the names of networking coordinators for each NGO.
• Formation of WhatsApp group “Coordination Committee of Khandwa (CCK)”
• Regular updates on the collaborative initiatives of the NGO partnerships.

The half-day meeting concluded with a vote of thanks delivered by Fr. Jayan Alex where he appreciated all the participants for their active participation in the meeting programme and for expressing their interests in such joint ventures.