Karnataka Regional Organization for Social Service (KROSS), Bengaluru an official social work body of Karnataka Regional Catholic Bishops Conference (KRCBC) in collaboration with Caritas India organized a 2-day “Training and dissemination of Caritas India Strategic Plan and Key Strategic Pillars and Catholic Social Teachings (CST) from 29-30, May, 2019 in KROSS, Bengaluru.

The Training and dissemination was organized for the local partners (DSSSs, Congregations and others in KROSS centre, Bengaluru. The purpose of the training is to ensure Participants have conceptual clarity on Key Strategic Pillars (KSPs-Development Approaches) and Catholic Social Teaching (CST) Principles, acquire knowledge and skills on how to strengthen practicing these principles and mainstream it in personal life and social work. This is being done so that the participants can disseminate the principles through their life and work in their own respective operational areas. 

54 participants from all over the state including KROSS staff attended the programme. Out of these 27 participants belong to DSSSs of Karnataka and remaining 22 members are representatives from other faith-based organizations & institutions.  Of the 54 participants, 22 are women including 8 sisters from different congregations.

Rev. Fr. Eugine Lobo, Secretary for Karnataka Regional Education Commission, inaugurated the training programme and appreciated the works of Caritas India in the country and KROSS in the state of Karnataka. He emphasised that there is need to spread the message of CST, which is human Value based principles to the larger mass.  On the occasion, two books in Kannada were released by Fr. Eugine and Ms. Coni Alva, a Governing Board Member of Caritas India and Director of the Organisation “I Create”. One book is the translated version of Catholic Social Teachings (CST) written by Fr. Dr. Jolly Assist Executive director, Caritas India and another is the Keys Strategic Pillars of Caritas India Strategic Plan, the copies of which were given to all the local partners.

Fr. Dr. Jolly took a session on CST and Ms. M. Shimray dealt on Caritas India Strategic plan and key strategic pillars. Mr. Robert D Souza dealt on volunteering, which is one of the pillars of Caritas India Strategic Plan. The module consisted of Input sessions and group works and individual assessment of the CST principle and practices.

Participants expressed that this training and dissemination programme was very useful. Much of the CST principles and Strategic Pillars /approaches are in practice to some extent but there is no systematic and organised way of orienting and assessing the practices and hence there is a need to strengthen the understanding, practices, and mainstream across all the partners work.

At the end of the training, the National Key strategic Pillars template was shared and all partners committed to share the action plan by 25^th of June 2019 to KROSS and Caritas India.