“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”. The saying stand relevant in the context of community development. The objective is to provide sustainable solutions emerging out of the community instead of giving temporary support based on external felt needs.

Our strong realisation having worked with community for decades is that Community by nature has inherent strength to handle its complexities and challenges. Hence, building their capacity coupled with showing a path of their self-reflection and action for development is more constructive. In this regard U3 (Uttoran, Ujivana & Ujeewala) programmes in West Bengal, Karnataka and Telenga respectively aimed at three major areas namely improving livelihood options, Rights and entitlement and strengthening institutions to facilitate transformation processes of the community..

Indigenous inhabitants of Mairu Basti village of Bagdogra, West Bengal has shown remarkable results in prevented the sand mining from Chenga River of their village. The illegal mining was causing destruction of river bed, environmental pollution, destruction of pasture, depletion of ground water level with increase number of accidents.

The processes entails sensitizing Self-Help Groups (SHGs) constituted under UTTORAN programme about their rights, entitlements and livelihood options. Through community level intervention mass petitions were submitted to the Gram Sabha, Naxalbari Police Station, Naxalbari BDO and Irrigation Department for stopping the mining. The efforts were fruitless unless community blocked roads under the leadership of women’s group and able to bring a full stop to the illegal mining in the area.

The programme made persistent efforts to mobilize communities for conscientization and made them aware about the ill impact of situation and possibilities for taking control of their own development. Communities were motivated to move from being passive recipients to active change agents and learnt to value and use the strength of the collective.

Similarly, women SHG ‘Malige’ of Gulbarga district of Karnataka received Rs. 91800/- for developing vermi compost units through a scheme coupled with MGNREGA scheme under Ujeevana programme. At present 30 vermi compost units are maintained by the group at RSK centre kottanur. The profit gained by selling manure will be deposited to the SHG account once the sale starts.

Hence, Communities are encouraged to initiate grassroots level movements to gain greater self-reliance through livelihood options like improved agriculture, accessing rights and entitlements. The programme had created space for traditional platforms and institutions as an integral part of the development agenda and enabled people to make use of their skills, knowledge and practices for solving problems.

With People Led Development approach the joint review of U3 cluster programme supported by Misereor exhibited various individual and community level achievements and results through collective efforts. The changes happening among individuals and community through collectives effort is encouraging.

Implemented by 16 local partners in 16 districts and 18 blocks of Karnataka, Telengana and West Bengal was recently reviewed at Dharwad, Belgaum in Karnataka on 14-15 Nov. 2016. 43 participants including 10 Directors of different Diocesan Social Service Societies along with 16 co-ordinators/animators and representatives from Caritas India Zonal and Head office staff participated in the review meeting of U3 programme.

The programme was inaugurated by Most Rev. Peter Machado, Bishop of Belgaum (Karnataka State). In his inaugural speech he informed that we all as human and development workers need to retrospect and take stock of how things happened for learning in order to progress with corrective measures.

Fr. Paul Moonjely, Assistant Director of Caritas India revisited the programme progress shared  by the Partners from People Led Development perspective and provided input to concretise and document the change processes achieved through this programme.