The 104th Annual Governing Board Meeting of Caritas India saw the release of climate adaptive, migration, and child development knowledge products on May 3rd 2023. These knowledge repositories are a perfect evidence-based example of encompassing the humungous work undertaken by Caritas India together with her partners.

Hosted in New Delhi, the meeting began with the opening words of Fr. Paul Moonjely, the Executive Director of Caritas India, stating that we as Governing Board Members are called to reaffirm the foundation of the faith of our actions and look for evidence on the acts that we do.

The year 2022-2023 has been a vibrant journey with a series of events that have kept Caritas India on the move. Being on the threshold of the Diamond Jubilee, Caritas India has been endeavoring to serve the most marginalized and venture into areas of risk that call for new strategies and plans. During that period, natural calamities were recurring with parts of Assam being flooded, whereas on the sidelines, there has been a situation of displaced population. Our Humanitarian aid has been constantly supporting the people of concern and those displaced. While the response to humanitarian aid is ongoing, Caritas India has also ventured into creating a repository of human and skillful resources, through innovative programs such as Readiness to Respond (R2R), Empower Asia and Re-skilling of the displaced migrant workers.

Archbishop Sebastian Kallupura, Chairman of Caritas India shared his thoughts on the changing environment within the country. He said that when we look at the civil society ecosystem, it seems there is a gradual fade of their presence in the country. Amidst this scenario, Caritas India is also going through troubled times. There is a need to be prepared for any eventuality. He reiterated that we need to have our systems in place for enhancing our local resource mobilization. We also need to strengthen the regional Caritas and Diocesan Caritas as well. While they must implement the program, there is another responsibility of Caritas India to work more strongly as a facilitating institution.

Caritas India presented her annual achievement and accomplishment for the year 2022-2023. Members appreciated the work of Caritas India and provided key suggestions and inputs to create a more meaningful impact on the ground. Caritas India highlighted the collaborative events of launching the multi-state child rights program that will focus on promoting a Happy Childhood. This venture also saw the Delegation from Caritas Australia, visiting our program sites for a better understanding of the program.

Caritas India has also initiated a series of studies to understand the ground situation of migrant workers, their transit patterns, livelihood mapping, and additional studies on the well-being status of the children in different states. Under Health and Nutrition, significant results were achieved, resulting in several interventional villages becoming free from Severely Acute Malnourished (SAM) children while also addressing malnutrition challenges among women and men.

Apart from our ongoing Cancer care programs initiated in previous years in five southern states, Caritas India has also launched the Sajeevam program that focusses on Drug Abuse amongst the Youth. This is a collaborative effort of the church in Kerala towards addressing this cause. Under Peace Building, we have initiated a Peace Yatra that would help create awareness and sensitization amidst the youth and the local communities. During the year we have seen the successful conclusion of some of our programs such as Anti Human Trafficking in North East, Global Program and PROCAP. Global Program, a large-scale intervention spread across four states and national level, designed a national conference on We4Resilience in October 2022 to bring the stakeholders on one platform to take the work further on the above themes.

The meeting successfully came to an end with an understanding that there would be more meaningful insights and new- learnings that would only add value to the work of Caritas India in her mission to serve as a Synodal Caritas.