The soul of the Saksham project is in the People Led Approach (PLA). Volunteerism is introduced to ensure the sustainability of project initiatives. Caritas India has kept food and nutritional security at the core of the project. Caritas India has selected to work with the farmers caught in fragile and vulnerable ecosystems and remote areas to engage in the project. This reflects the values and development vision of Caritas India and project partners. The trust levels of communities, as well as diverse stakeholders in Caritas vision and abilities, are highly evident. Also, the Caritas teams seem to be uncompromising on ensuring this core vision, values, and strategies.

Building on the progress made in the first phase of Saksham, the second phase emphasizes on the Socio-economic and political empowerment, specifically in the field of food and nutrition security of marginalized and smallholder farmers (including landless farmers) and wage laborer’s in Rajasthan and Ganges Valley (Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh & Bihar) in the North of India.

The intervention revolves around the objective of accomplishing agriculture sovereignty of communities so that local agriculture system becomes resilient and sustainable in terms of eco-system, economy, and culture. Therefore, the intervention strengthens indigenous agriculture systems in such a way that the community’s dependency on external agriculture inputs is reduced and income drain is stopped. The intervention also works on community’s knowledge on mixed farming, bio-diversity so that seed diversity is strengthened. Community-Based Organisations (CBOs) are facilitated in such a way that these organisations facilitate learning and experience exchange at the village level. In a nutshell, this project is led by communities in the real sense – in other words, this project is be based on people’s resources – knowledge as well as material/finance.

The program lays emphasis on community-led processes of empowering and mobilizing resources. With continuous reflection circles, the partners revisit their accompaniment and rapport with the communities. Saksham is an intervention responding to the collective aspirations of the community.

FOOD SECURITY AND SOVEREIGNTY

• Creating farmers associations, marketing of products and linkages with other organizations to enhance production and value addition
• Recognizing and promoting people’s knowledge and wisdom related to various aspects of the program
• Helping farmers localize and recoup control over agriculture.
• Promoting agriculture as a culture with gender justice and growing food with respect to nature
• Strengthen dialogue and bridge-building process between public food distribution systems and communities to ensure that all have food.

 GOVERNANCE

• Capacitating communities through leadership development, organization building, volunteering and local resource mobilization for climate change adaptation
• Developing models on adaptive initiatives with most vulnerable farming communities across the agro-climatic zones
• Dialogue and alliance building with government and non-government stakeholders to strengthen the issues emanating around food sovereignty
• Broad-based participation at the local level to foster transparency. Engaging in different platforms and involving the community members in the decision-making process

RIGHTS AND ENTITLEMENTS

• Building local leadership and volunteer base. Developing and promoting women and men leaders to voice their opinions in public and government platforms and offices to claim their entitlements
• Strengthening the awareness and realization on rights and entitlements by facilitating an increase in the active participation of the communities in different government offices.

During the 3-day workshop organized for 7 Saksham partners (of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Rajasthan) by Caritas India in Kotdwar (Uttarakhand) the participants were oriented on the programme goal and objectives and strategies including people-led development, volunteerism, food sovereignty. Detailed Implementation Plan (DIP) was developed and target for outcome/ objective Indicators was set and submitted by all the 7 partners. The participants were oriented on “feedback mechanism” and its reporting format, feedback register format to be placed in one village on a pilot basis, how KSP indicators have been integrated in the programme Log frame and its reporting. They were also oriented on Farmers Diary format which is to be with 10% of the target farmers for proper documentation.

A list of central and state (UP and Rajasthan) government list was prepared during the workshop and the reporting format was also discussed and finalized. Partners were oriented on Earth Day Network (EDN) activities and its integration in Saksham programme activities, case study & impact study documentation, photo documentation, action photos.

Action plan for the next 5 months was developed in consultation with all the staffs with a timeline of the key deliverables listed out.