Sabal phase I concluded with a significant impact in the diversification of nutrition and agriculture among the Korkus staging a remarkable recovery from chronic hunger and malnutrition. Caritas India in partnership with local implementing organisations and government health and nutrition machinery, succeeded in reducing malnutrition (Underweight) by 32.5% in the year 2021 as compared to the Underweight prevalence rate in 2017. Similarly, the prevalence rate of Wasting was brought down by a significant 31.3% as compared to the Wasting rate in 2017.

Sabal phase II is developed to scale up the issues related to food and nutrition insecurities to create policy-level impacts at the district and state-level through community initiatives and campaigns. Two days impact planning and orientation workshop was organized by the Caritas India Sabal Management team for its grassroots partners to build clarity and consensus on the strategies for implementation.

The workshop was initiated with a formal welcome and introduction by Mr. Mukund Deshmukh, Asst. Programme Lead – Sabal followed by invoking the blessings of God with a prayer offered by Fr. Jose Kunnapally, Director Jeevan Vikas Sanstha (JVS). In the context setting, Dr. Saju MK, Zonal Lead Caritas India highly appreciated the intensive efforts the Sabal partner team have contributed to the achievement of significant impact for ensuring food and nutrition security among the Korku tribes in a very short duration. He emphasized, “we have been doing intensive work at the micro-level which has proved to be successful in mobilizing the community for greater realization of the importance of food and nutrition diversification to address chronic hunger and malnutrition. In the second phase, we need to escalate our efforts in taking these grassroots level initiatives towards district and state level to bring policy-level impacts.”

A focused group discussion was conducted on reflecting on the key interventions areas where the partners have intensively worked during the last two months of the project period. Mr. Robin George, Programme Lead – Sabal helped the participants to present the initiatives in initiating special Gram Sabha, linking Sabal soil water conservation initiatives with MGNREGA, joint ventures with Government functionaries in promoting various schemes related to employment, plantation and mother & child health nutrition. The communities were also capacitated on collective initiatives for addressing village level developmental issues.

Dr. Saju formally started the impact planning workshop by developing clarity and consensus among the partner on the Sabal-II programme framework and introduced macro and meso level results where the partner team need to strategize their initiatives. He also stressed on capitalizing the goodwill created through the Sabal programme and developing models on malnutrition-free, drainage-free, and micro-watershed villages with the support of Government schemes and programme.

Clarity was built among the partners on the distribution of efforts while working at a different level of the programme outcomes where 70% efforts to be invested in micro-level outcomes, 20% efforts to meso-level and 10% to macro-level outcomes. The group activity was conducted where all the partners needed to discuss and select at least 2 macro level and 3 meso level activities and plan the corresponding result achievement activities along with a quarterly plan for completion. Day 1 of the programme concluded with the session on finance management and administrative guidelines by Mr. Soju Mathew, Zone Finance Officer Caritas India.

The second day of the impact planning workshop started with a prayer offered by Sr. Ashalata, Coordinator Jeevan Vikas Sanstha (JVS). The sessions of the second day were divided into two sections with presentations from the Caritas India Sabal Management team for proposing various high-level activities and contributing factors to achieve the meso and macro-level initiatives followed by concluding the programme with finalizing programme detailed implementation plan for 18 months.