Intensifying accompaniment for mainstreaming key strategic pillars

The meeting with the twenty-five selected partners from the Southern Regions was held at the KROSS office in Bengaluru on October 16, 2019. The meeting was facilitated by Fr Joseph Xavier, Director of ISI Bengaluru. The purpose of this meeting was to come together and reflect on the intensive accompaniment plan for mainstreaming Key Strategic Pillars (KSPs) and get consensus from the selected partners and then chart out potential ways for translating the KSPs on the ground.

In the piloting phase, Caritas India (CI) would be intensively working with fifty dioceses to implement the Key Strategic Pillars (KSPs) on the ground. Hence, this meeting was an effort to come together and discuss the way forward and the role and expectations of Caritas and Partners in the journey.

It was highlighted that the effort is to make a paradigm shift in our way of functioning and operationalising. The four KSPs, developed based on the experience and guidance of the experts, give us motivation and clarification on how social work could enforce people-led movements. KSPs approaches are crucial for creating viable impacts of social work and sustaining them.  If these get operationalise properly, then there is hope for the future. Thus, the journey, one is embarking upon is not a project-based, it is an approach and culture which need to be integrated into all the initiatives for sustainability. In this partnership, the four KSPs form an ecosystem for all the engagements and social work.  Hence, the invitation to the partners in this journey is to visualise how each of us can contribute to it.

For this purpose, a team was formed, named Animation Reflection Circle (ARC), consisting of a panel of experts who would guide the team and critically examine and analyse the processes.

The organogram of the ecosystem for this journey depicts Caritas Strategic Team consisting of CI staff, Forum Strategy Team constituting 14 Regional Forum Coordinators, Diocesan Leaders i.e. the fifty Directors of the identified partner organisations and Community Leaders, mobilised from the community to be the part of this journey.

Group discussion and deliberation brought forth what each region commits to engage in and contribute to the journey. The meeting ended on a positive note where everyone suggested various ways to move forward, such as the diocesan plan to be integrated with the KSPs, infusing new blood into all the systems, identifying the point person and orienting them, giving a name for this initiative, etc. The participants highlighted their expectations from CI such as resource support in mainstreaming the KSPs, bringing the Bishops on board and supporting the partners in capacity building. The participants shared that they are motivated and inspired to work collectively and differently for a better world.