Impacts of Caritas India programmes were consolidated and reviewed in the context of the indicators of 5-year Strategic Plan of Caritas India in a two-day workshop held in Chennai on 24 and 25 February. The review was conducted to assess the progress of cluster programmes in achieving the targets stipulated in the Strategic Plan 2019-2023. During the workshop, cluster programme managers also reviewed and refined the strategic indicators that will be employed for measuring the achievement of Caritas India programmes in the next five years.

Addressing the workshop Fr. Paul Moonjely, Executive Director Caritas India, emphasized the need of rigorous accompaniment and assessment for ensuring the effectiveness of cluster programmes that are implemented across the country. While introducing the strategic pillars of Strategic Plan of Caritas India Fr. Paul said, “Caritas India programmes will remain rooted to four foundational processes and considerations of Empowering Animation, Dialogue, Sharing Communities and Volunteerism. These four pillars will give both direction and impetus to all programmes of Caritas India, regardless of their thematic focus”. Fr. Paul also said that the strategic plan indicators based on strategic pillars will help Church-based organisations across the country evaluate their programme performance and relevance in their specific operational contexts. Mr. Kushal Neogy, sub-regional director of Catholic Relief Services (CRS), co-facilitated the workshop.

Caritas India has been implementing all her programmes in ‘cluster programme’ mode for addressing common regional considerations like climate change resilience, nutrition, and food security, tribal identity and entitlements, emergency relief, recovery and reconstruction, peace, sustainable agriculture, etc. Cluster programme strategy has helped Caritas India and her partners implement thematic interventions with greater effectiveness with the knowledge and experience sharing platforms and more robust coordination mechanisms that are activated with each cluster programme.

During the workshop, the programme managers compiled Strategic Plan indicators and refined them for making them efficient to sufficiently capture the programme impacts of Caritas India. The team chalked out four sets of indicators which will be used by Caritas India and her partners after necessary orientation and reflections at national, regional and state levels. The Strategic Plan-2019-2023 was inaugurated recently and more than 180 Caritas India partners across India had pledged their support to align their organizational interventions to the strategic programme themes proposed by Caritas India.

Fr. (Dr.) Jolly Puthenpura, Assistant Executive Director, detailed on the need for concurrent assessment and also spoke on the arrangements that will be functionalized at various levels for ensuring accurate quantification of Caritas India contribution to nation building. The workshop concluded with a vote of thanks by Mr. Rajesh Upadhyaya, Head of Partner Support Services of Caritas India.