The well being of an individual residing in the community solely depends upon the efforts contributed by every individual collectively with his fellow community members living together and working together. However, in every collective organization three things come free; disorder, failure and disagreements.

Korku community which has been facing chronic hunger and malnutrition since decades is also a result of the disorganizations, lack of focus on the real issues and absence of collective realization of their community needs.

Sabal programme since the past 4 years has been intensively working towards concretizing the Korku tribe on the issues of food and nutrition insecurity and creating awareness on the causes responsible for the chronic malnutrition. The primary focus of the programme was to promote diversification and strengthening of food crop production, reviving the drought-resistant millet crop production, demanding services from the grassroots institutional systems like Anganwadi’s by initiating peoples’ network and alliances.

The programme facilitation has been effective in creating a sense of realization about the benefits of collective efforts and unity through peoples’ network and alliances among the community members.

Now, the community comes together to discuss the development issues of their own and the fellow-community members. Community succeeded in getting 164 demands related to job opportunities, construction of concrete cemented (cc) roads, household water connections, benefits of agriculture schemes and ration entitlements

Recently, the collective efforts have resulted in mobilizing employment opportunities for 7429 Korku migrant returnees through MGNREGA of labour worth ₹22.01 million during the lockdown.

Increased service seeking behaviour of the Korku mothers have benefitted 4568 families with under-5 children and pregnant mothers to avail benefits of institutional nutrition support during the pandemic.

The programme has brought a great sense of confidence among the community and a strong belief about the importance of unity and collectivism which has taken the initiative to next level. The community is preparing micro-plans with the support of Sabal team in order to identify the key developmental issues related to food and nutrition security and village development. They are also dialoguing with the local governance system demanding their rights and entitlements. Due to COVID-19 pandemic, all the Gram Sabha meetings have been cancelled but the community members are approaching the PRI members personally and submitting their demands and needs.

So far, 23 meetings for the development of the village micro plans have been conducted with the community members by Sabal CBO leaders. The community has collectively decided to submit the applications seeking their demand before the code of conduct is applied in Madhya Pradesh for the bypoll election.