In the past two decades, there have been genuine efforts in the development sector to stimulate a community-led approach. It marked a broader shift in understanding and treating people as passive ‘beneficiaries’ or ‘consumers’ of development services to recognizing them as active producers of livelihood strategies and wisdom, and necessary and credible participants in decision‑making processes.

Over the years, Caritas India has facilitated the Community-Led Development (CLD) approach, which it terms as Empowering Animation (EA), at the grassroots level across the country. While continuing the initiatives at the grassroot level, under the current Strategic Plan of the organization, the thrust is to amplify the process of Empowering Animation to the macro level, by bringing the common interest groups from across the country.

However, the current situation of the pandemic has brought a lot of queries, doubts and paucity. There are many ambiguities and concerns regarding how one could continue the grassroots engagements when the world is going virtual leaving behind the understanding of the scarcity of infrastructure in the majority geographical areas.

Hence, Caritas India organized a webinar on the theme “Empowering Animation in the New Normal” on 17^th September 2020 on the virtual platform. This webinar was an effort to bring such concerns at one platform and discuss a way forward in the ‘New Normal’, as to how we could sustain the people’s movements at micro-level initiatives and further build on macro-level people’s movement under the local people’s leadership.

The webinar was moderated by Ms. Shimray, Manager – Strategic Plan Implementation and Capacity Building at Caritas India. There were around 160 participants who attended the webinar and 285 Facebook users who viewed the Webinar, streamed live on Caritas Page. The participants included our former chairman, Bp. Lumen, Forum Directors, Diocesan Directors, Coordinators, CI Staff and development practitioners from other like-minded NGOs.

The webinar started with the inaugural address from our Executive Director, Fr Paul Moonjely. He shared that understanding and assimilating the concept of empowering animation, Caritas India aims to journey with the community, through the support of the experts. The purpose is to facilitate the community to be self-reliant and to be owners and subjects of the processes of change.

The first input session was given by Mr Kalicharan Marandi, the country coordinator of PLDP, Jan Vikas in Odisha. He emphasized on how a development practitioner could shift and need to shift their approach in their ongoing programs if one really is working towards sustainability, how one could facilitate a community-led approach by adopting and adapting to various ways of dialogue with the community, learning how to put the lead question to the community as a facilitator, understanding the difference between project-oriented and process-oriented approach and organizing regular doubt clearing debate sessions to get more clarifications and planning a way forward in a localized manner. He explained the process through his own life experiences and a decade long journey.

Dr Saju, the Zonal Manager of Western Region at Caritas India, emphasized on the perspective of Empowering Animation (EA) as adopted by Caritas India i.e. an awakening to social transformation and affirmation to the dignity of the conformity. He stressed on the need for localization and self-reliance, which is the mantra to success. A healthy blend of localisation and globalisation is required i.e. glocalisation, which had been one of the learnings of Caritas India during the Covid-19 pandemic. Dr. Rajesh Tandon, the Founder-President of Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), emphasised on the ways of communicating that has changed in the New Normal. Looking at the current context, he stressed that it is important to invest in the local educators. Moreover, there is a need to view learners as educators and facilitate mutual learning. The mantra to EA is F2C i.e. facilitate to change.

Mr. Debjeet, the coordinator at Living Farms, shared few insights from his experience to facilitate ‘Community-Led Development in the New Normal’ and beyond. He posed some very introspective questions as to how one could accompany the partnering communities in their efforts in reclaiming their self-reliance and autonomy, reviving their self-governing non-bureaucratic institutions, evolving alternative models to the present paradigm of development and economic relations and so on. The input session ended with Fr Joseph Xavier’s sharing of the Lok Manch Model, an answer to all the dilemmas pertaining to the “how” part of Empowering Animation. Along with explaining the model, e also shared the learnings that popped up in the journey.

The webinar ended with the concluding remark by Fr Jolly, Assistant Director of Caritas India, with appreciative words for the speakers and the organizers. Echoing and resonating with all the speakers’ sharing, he called each of the participants to introspect on questions like ‘What kinds of futures do we really want? How can we strive for ‘a hopefully wiser, civilization?’’

Overall, the webinar helped to enhance the understanding on ways to convert the ongoing programs into community-led initiatives and encouraged the participants to look for new avenues and opportunities that the current situation i.e. the New Normal has brought into the community-led approach. Embedded by rich and own experiences of the speakers, the webinar proved to be quite insightful and enriching.