Caritas India is a learning organization evolving with every new opportunity to grow and impact larger, diverse communities. As part of institutional strengthening, Caritas India is always committed to strengthening capacities of its partner organizations.

EMPOWER Asia is yet another program of Caritas India to empower local organizations (DSSS) to support the development of their communities so they may gain greater control over their future development. Basically, it works towards the advancement of local leadership.

Recently, Caritas India hosted the EMPOWER Asia meet from 21st – 24th March at New Delhi with the presence of the esteemed Management, CRS members, Mr. Kushal Neogy, Mr. Ananth Kaliyaperumal, Mr. Neal Deles, Ms. Keerthana Thanikal and Ms. Gunjika Misra and 4 partner Directors, Fr. Lijo George, Fr. Mrutyunjay Digal, Fr. Amit Mandal, Fr. Saumen Mallik.

Caritas India aspires to be a role model for practicing subsidiarity in a real sense by providing opportunities to the Diocesan Social Service Societies (DSSS) to learn and grow by promoting representation in the humanitarian system through Inter-agency platforms at the state and national level, through the India Humanitarian Hub initiative and by offering a structured capacity building programme including a systematic accompaniment support to the DSSS. Phase II aims to build on the efforts under phase I and focus on continuing to strengthen Caritas India such that it can further initiate actions to strengthen the capacities of identified Diocesan partners to be effective first responders. Based on the feedback received from CRS for Phase II of the project, it was decided to focus on two states of West Bengal and Odisha with two Diocesan partners each due to their geographical location.

The acronym ‘EMPOWER’ stands for Empowering Partners Working on Emergency Response in Asia. With the aim of strengthening systems to have effective and efficient emergency responses, EMPOWER Asia phase II majorly focuses on sharing Caritas India’s achievements with partner organizations to empower them as first responders. The first day was opened with prayer and context setting by Fr. Jolly (Assistant Executive Director, Caritas India) and Mr. Senthil (Executive Director, CRS). This was followed by an overall overview of the EMPOWER Asia program by Mr. Neal Deles, EMPOWER (Asia) Coordinator from CRS to be on the same page with the objectives and expected results followed by sharing of reflections & achievements by Caritas India under phase-I by Mr. Anjan Bag (Thematic Lead, Caritas India). The last session of the day was concentrated on CIMS (Caritas Internationalis Management Standards) assessment sharing by partner organizations. A 2-hour discussion took place about how precise the scoring could be when supported by Evidence.

The second and third days were Training of Trainers on SOP facilitated by the Caritas India team involving the importance of SOPs, Major components like HR & Procurement policies, as the partner organizations would be working on mainstreaming their own organizational SOPs to be able to secure better funds and effective responses, followed by extensive MEAL sessions on 24th. Learnings from other country programs were also shared to have an idea about how we can have optimum results through empowerment for our partner organizations.

After the 4-day training and discourse, a de-brief was conducted to strategize the next steps along with date finalizations for major activities to be undertaken in the upcoming months for the pilot project and documenting the good–practices and achievements.

Overall, the discourse gave macro as well as a macro-level understanding of the opportunities that the project provides to us and Partner Directors who showed special interest in the growth of their organizations. They look forward to transforming into better strategic organizations with enhanced systems, processes, guidelines, and modules in place through policy formulation/reworking. Caritas would play the major role of accompaniment in CIMS assessments, Policy revisions, and other technical support along with individual visits to each partner organization i.e. Balasore Social Service Society (BSSS), Catholic Charities, Krishnagar Cathedral Charitable Social Society (KCCSS), Palli Unnayan Samiti (PUS) in Odisha and West Bengal respectively as way forward.