If we are going to bring socio-economic justice, we need to empower the community. Statistics say that a movement is required to create a change. Sustainable Development Goals can be met only by empowering communities to take lead in their development process.

To make a genuine difference to North East India’s marginalised communities, Caritas India FARM Northeast programme jointly worked with the community to create People Led Development models. Community-based organisations were strengthened at the local level to aggregate group activities for the common good.

FARM Northeast programme has promoted community empowerment as a process whereby a group of people have come together to meet on equal terms to facilitate a participatory decision-making process. In other words, it can be viewed as a process that began as a dialogue among members of the community to determine their challenges and issues, volunteered to participate by sharing their resources and making a collective empowered action to make a change in their lives.

Kduplangki Village Organisation (VO), a group of SHGs from Thangrain village in West Jaintia Hills of Meghalaya was established in 2019 for the welfare of the village. The FARM team of Jaintia Hills Development Society (JHDS) facilitated the formation of the VO and thereby the SHGs mostly led by women. The organisations were engaged in agricultural activities primarily for turmeric, ginger and green vegetables. Apart from these, they were also involved in livestock farming like poultry and piggery. Food processing, another area that brought the community together as a group. The raw product required for the processing are the result of the FARM interventions taken in the area.

During the Covid19 pandemic, thousands of marginalized families in the FARM programme villages faced dire situations due to loss of livelihood and health crisis. The situation has forced the Government, NGOs and corporate sector to establish relief assistance through the distribution of food kits and other items. However, this assistance could not reach all the people especially the rural population and most deserving victims, and these deserving lots are still struggling hard to make their ends meet.

Experiencing the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Kduplangi VO came forward during the 2^nd Wave to help the most affected families through group and individual contributions. The members mobilized a fund of Rs 75,000 in cash and kind to reach out to the affected families with generous contributions from the different sections of the community. They also reached out to well to do households for collecting donations. A need assessment survey was conducted by the community to provide free food kits to 50 affected families and assisted them with dry rations and vegetables, among other things.

“We as a VO came together to reach out to our brothers and sisters in need and we are glad that we could do all that we could for them”, said Smt. Phrangki Pran, an active member of the VO.

The VO also supported JHDS in its mission to aware the communities about vaccination. The vaccination drive conducted by the health department had created confusion among the frontline workers due to rejection by the community members especially due to illiteracy and poverty. Seeing this situation, the Kduplangki VO again came forward to organise an Awareness programme on Covid Vaccination with the facilitation of JHDS FARM Team. Presently, at least 40 per cent of the community member are vaccinated, and the awareness programme is still going on with supports from other groups as well.