Mainstreaming strategic pillars in Gram Nirman

Gram review cum planning meeting was held from 27-29^th July 2022 at HRDC Ranchi, Jharkhand. It was attended by 25 participants, including Fr. Jolly, Assistant Executive Director of Caritas India. As Gram Nirman-II was entering its second year of implementation, it became necessary to evaluate results achieved in the first year and plan accordingly for the second year. As Key Strategic Pillars are the core of the operational approach, sessions on mainstreaming Key Strategic Pillars (KSPs) were held on the second and third day

Fr. (Dr) Jolly Puthenpura, AED of Caritas India in his keynote address highlighted the importance of working with the DSSS for the church’s mission of working for the poor. The cluster leads of Jharkhand then shared the progress of interventions in their respective areas. The community educators then interacted with Fr. Jolly, sharing their experiences, achievements, new learnings, and challenges while implementing the program on the ground.

Mr Nikhil, PMU Lead of Gram Nirman, shared the significant achievements in the program’s first year. Fr. Jolly critically evaluated the results and gave his input to improve the quality of the program interventions and partnership with diocesan partners and other stakeholders.

Pradipta Chand, Caritas India’s Climate Adaptive Agriculture and Food Sovereignty (CAA&FS) lead shared in detail the plan of second-year activities in a very participatory manner. He emphasised outcome-based activity planning as well as the technical aspects of each activity, and the possibilities and need for thematic inclusion for the enhancement of benefits for the targeted community using field-based examples.

Two days were dedicated to mainstreaming Key Strategic Pillars (KSPs) in the Gram Nirman Program. Fr. Jolly set the context by highlighting the importance of four KSPs, i.e. Empowering Animation, Dialogue, Volunteering and Community Sharing in the organisational Strategy. He emphasised the need for realignment and learning, practising, and promoting these approaches in all programmes. Ms Shimray and Ms Ankita from the Caritas India Strategic Plan Team provided conceptual clarity on the four pillars of strategic actions and their indicators.  The participants shared various initiatives under four pillars and sought clarifications on documentation.

Ms Shimray discussed the importance of KSPs in Gram Nirman. The session was followed by a cluster-based group activity to identify and assign KSP indicators to the activities. Finally, the groups collaborated to consider and identify the key strategic indicators. The review cum mainstreaming KSP meeting concluded with the participants presenting their targets and reflecting on how they can work together to achieve better results.