Caritas India in its Sabal-II programme organized a partners review cum planning meeting programme on 1st and 2nd November 2022 at Jeevan Darshan Training Centre, Paratwada Amravati. The two days programme was participated by directors, outreach workers, field outreach workers, field facilitators, and representatives of the Water & Climate India (WCI) programme. Fr. (Dr) Jolly Puthenpura, Assistant Executive Director – Caritas India and Dr. Saju MK, Zonal Program Lead – West Zone.

Caritas India also marked their presence at the meeting. The meeting was primarily focused on introducing the partners to the Standard Operating Guidelines (SoG) & Accountability Framework for improving programme effectiveness.

Caritas India through a common platform provides the opportunity to its implementing partners to present their programme achievements and reflect on their key learnings and mutually work on addressing the gaps and challenges of the programme.

Partners’ review cum planning meeting commenced with a formal welcome by Robin George, Programme Lead followed by prayer and lighting of the lamp by organizational representatives.

“Two days meeting is primarily focused on presenting our key achievements and impacts of the programme and also working on value addition through mutual learning and experience sharing,” shared Dr. Saju MK while setting the context.

Dr. Saju said Sabal has transformed into a community-owned initiative and become a model for other Caritas India programmes. He emphasized working intensively on meso and macro-level initiatives and creating replicable models of our grassroots impact.

“Caritas India strongly believes in building and touching human life”, shared Fr. (Dr) Jolly, Assistant Executive Director of Caritas India to the participants. He said, “Caritas India believes that partnership is a democratic and dialogical process of mutual help, accountability sharing and empowerment.”

Fr. (Dr) Jolly took a session to bring clarity to Standard Operating Guidelines & Partnership Accountability Framework. In this session, he spoke about guidelines for programme implementation management, leadership roles of the partner directors, the role of grassroots workers and effective financial practices. He also oriented on the partner’s performance assessment framework which will be used periodically for performance measurement and proposed strategies for effectiveness at all levels.

“Transitioning from the micro level to impact level results should be the focus of the programme,” suggested Fr. Jolly.

Dr. Mukund Deshmukh, Asst. Programme Lead facilitated the session of partners’ presentation of their impact and results for the period from June – October 2022. The outreach workers took the lead and presented all the results and success of the Sabal programme and also presented the plan of action for the next four months. He increased the participation of the directors in programme initiatives for improving the quality and effectiveness of the programme. “We also need to assess how the programme has been effective in creating an impact on the neighbouring non-intervention villages” – he added.

Sabal management team also delivered capacity-building sessions for the participants as part of knowledge development and take-home learning.

In his presentation, Dr. Saju MK shared Caritas India’s perspective on the role of women in the farming system to address the food and nutrition security problems at the household and community level. He shared that to address the problem of food and nutrition security we need to win the battles against four major issues viz. chemical farming, mono-cropping, cash crop dominance and patriarchal agriculture. In his concluding session, he also presented a comparison between men and women farmers concerning crop patterns and preferences.

The impact of WASH practices on Community Health was shared by Mr. Robin to increase the understanding of the participants. He clarified four categories of water-related diseases: water-borne, water-washed, water-based and water-related insect vector diseases. He spoke about the association of water and sanitation-related illness to the increased incidences of malnutrition. He concluded with the initiatives Sabal can adopt towards achieving community behaviour change on WASH practices which included developing children as “Hygiene Agents”, campaigns for open defecation-free (ODF) villages and observance of Global Handwashing Day and Deworming Day.

Dr Mukund Deshmukh discussed the strategies for addressing community migration by tapping employment opportunities at the community level under MGNREGS. He detailed step-by-step measures for mobilizing the community to demand job opportunities under MGNREGS. He emphasized conducting a study on seasonal migration, preparing net-planning and labour budget, and submitting to Rozgar Sevak and Tantrik and facilitation for initiating work.

“Ensuring healthy financial practices according to the standard operating procedures and in compliance with FCRA guidelines” – Soju Mathew.

The meeting concluded with developing a partner-level plan of action for the next four months from November 2022 – February 2023 followed by a vote of thanks delivered by Mr. Soju Mathew, Finance Lead.