Facilitating Community Based Resource Management and Development for Ensuring Livelihood Security and Sustainable Development in Chacha Gram Panchayet of Nabarangpur District of Orissa

Background

Regional Centre for Development Cooperation (RCDC), established in 1993, started facilitating development of a programme with support from Strømme Foundation in 2001, following participatory approaches, believing that tribal communities do have adequate capacity to plan for their own development being better resource managers than the external agencies and the government to address myriad of problems and challenges they face.

Purpose/objective

The objective of the evaluation was to assess the changes/impact on the target population as well as to assess the suitability of the concept of the programme and its impact e.g. focusing on (a) the physical progress of the project including significant changes in the economic and social life of the women due to the increase of micro-credit activities, (b) changes that have taken place in the lives of the target populace and (c) changes in the community based people's institutions and their capacity to sustain the efforts of the project.

Methodology

The evaluation design included both primary sources e.g. through focused group discussions with self-help group members, villagers of one control village and staff members of RCDC both from the field and management level and individual interviews with Gram Panchayet representatives, one Bloc representative, extension workers from public health and agriculture, managing director of a rural bank and secondary data from project documents, mid-term evaluation report, annual reports, credit and savings records, baseline survey document, minutes of the group meetings, group based information, bylaws and quarterly reports. The team also undertook physical observations in the relevant project areas.

Key findings

i) Institution Building
The major achievement has been facilitation of formation of Self-Help Groups (SHGs) from tribal community. Traditionally believed to be discriminated and exploited by other groups in society, these organizations have provided them room for sharing their problems, developing leadership qualities and raising their issues with appropriate authorities. The Federation, formed with representatives from SHGs, appeared to be competent to advocate for the cause of the tribal
people with the leadership having easy access to Gram Panchayet leaders. Village Development Committees have emerged as local watchdog bodies comprising SHG members and others with a local level community driven system demanding accountability from public/local government agencies.
ii) Economic Empowerment - Impact of Credit and Savings
The project has helped people to diversify their income sources some have diverted from day-labour to concentrate on agriculture. cultivating more land than they did before. The income situation has improved significantly. The project has lessened dependency of the people on local moneylenders however partial.
iii) People's Participation
SHGs, VDCs and Project Implementation Committees (PIC) are engaged in implementation of the project. For example, the SHGs manage credit and savings. Issues related to the village and Block is addressed by VDC and PICs. Lobbying with the government officials and access to government programmes and extension services are taken care of.
iv) Access to Public/Government Services
Due to campaigns of the people, birth attendants now visit homes in the villages. Vaccinations are now accessible. Changes have also occurred in the area of roads and accessibility of water. SHGs access formal banks, local extension offices at Block and Gram Panchayet levels regarding education, health, forest department and agriculture.
v) Sustainability of the project
SHGs, although assisted by the animators, have emerged as their platform to discuss their issues. The target people have indicated that they would continue their group activities. The Federation formed with the representations from SHGs is regarded as their institution. The external people like Sarpanch also recognize that SHGs and Federation are functioning. The SHG members have demonstrated that they have the potential to run their institutions. However, low level of literacy will remain a barrier to keep records of the groups. The savings and credit activities and maintaining of the group-based records will require the work of the animators also in future. The question arises how their honorarium can be financed after phase-out.

Recommendations

i) RCDC should phase-out from several good graded SHGs, study the implications of phase-out and prepare for complete phase-out by 2006. In this process, more capacity building of CBOs will be necessary for the leadership of SHGs, Federation and Cooperatives.
iii) RCDC should make use of its information bank more for grassroot level project management. For example, the animators should know SHG-wise information of the beneficiaries and work for their improvement. Periodically, they can measure whether the expected changes occur instead of just implementing the Activity.
iv) RCDC should continue with the savings and credit operations only if it can run it following the basic principles of the programme. The existing situation suggests that in future its credit and savings operations should confine on making the SHGs bankable. As soon as a SHG has been linked with the bank, RCDC's credit and savings operations should be discontinued.
v) Since traditional area of employment and income is limited, RCDC should stress more on entrepreneurship development for off-farm activities linking the target people with the market (forward and backward). The idea of establishing cooperatives to ensure fair price for buyers and sellers goes in the right direction, but RCDC should make a group of SHG-members capable to run such cooperatives/shops in their own account as a business venture.
vi) RCDC should establish linkage with other NGOs in the locality and share experiences and lessons learnt. NGO partnership may be sought in complementary areas provided there exists NGOs specialized in health, water and sanitation, family planning, etc.
vii) RCDC should strengthen the capacities of the Federation to take up advocacy roles also at the Bloc and District level. Provided RCDC replicates the project in other GPs, similar Federations should be established and all of them should be guided to come under an Apex to undertake effective advocacy. RCDC, even if it is in alliance with other NGOs, will require an organized and mobilized group at the District level. The Federations should be linked with other societies and women cooperatives for linkage with procurement, processing and trading.
viii) SF should approve the budget before financial year and provide sound information basis for swapping the expenditure with the income from micro-credit to be credited to SF.

Comments from the organisation

SF is very satisfied with the findings of the evaluation, that is, the Project has been able to achieve the main objective of mobilizing and strengthening peoples' institutions in the project areas and these institutions have acquired capacity to function by themselves with some efforts. And as it was suggested in the evaluation, SF and RCDC agreed to phase out after 2006 allowing RCDC to complete the full phase out. The project would be a resource and learning place for SF and its partners to learn rural institution building among low caste and tribal communities. We have already drawn resource person from RCDC to review a similar project in Bangladesh i.e. RDRS (314014).