To enhance people’s participation for public accountability and community empowerment through organization of community participation process and ensuring democratic representation of people for sustainable development of communities.

We also aim to achieve overall development of the community as well as village people. The issues concerning cultural economic diversity, substance abuse, interventions at different life cycle stages, problem-solving interventions and intervention in community contexts. The sector is concerned with enhancing quality of life and promoting well-being for individuals, families.

This Sector works with both urban and rural communities where people are struggling with poverty and ignorance. In urban centers work is being concentrated in slums and in rural areas we work in villages. The sector uses a planned process to activate communities to use their own social structures and available resources to accomplish community goals decided primarily by community representatives and generally consistent with local attitudes and values.

Community participation . . . is the key to community success

SHGs play a social role in the lives of women in the community. Self Help Groups of women are formed in the communities with the motive to empower them. Once they realize the importance of savings in their lives they shall start Income Generation activities to support their families.  SHGs give the women a platform to express themselves. Time to times we conduct sessions which generate awareness amongst them about their rights provided by the rule of law.

In a participating community, power and responsibility are decentralized

In communities where we are working people especially women are ignorant about their rights provided by the constitution of India. It is also due to the ignorance that the community suffers from many social evils. Our beneficiaries are unable to avail the benefits from government schemes specially designed for poverty driven areas, due of lack of knowledge about their rights. These situations are prevailing because most of community especially women are illiterate as compared to men. Dropout rate from school is high amongst girls. It is felt by parents that they have to learn household work, as it will be there future occupation. They could not select their life partner for marriage where as rights has been provided by the rule of law. Girls are not allowed to take up any profession according there wish. Women who works in construction sites could not get equal wage compare to men, where as equal wage for equal work right has been provided by the constitution. With our intervention people are now very much aware about the current affairs through Community Information Center.
Need
Organizing community seeks to broadly empower community members, by distributing power more equally throughout the community. Consensual community development efforts to improve communities through a range of strategies, usually directed by educated professionals working in government, policy, non-profit or business organizations, is not community organizing Community development projects increasingly include a community participation component, and often seek to empower residents of impoverished areas with skills for collaboration and job training, among others. However, community development generally assumes that groups and individuals can work together collaboratively without significant conflict or struggles over power to solve community challenges.

Process
To enhance people’s participation for public accountability and community empowerment.

	Organization of Community Participation Process- to organize the community, following steps are taken
	Sensitization of communities about their rights and responsibilities
	Ensuring Democratic Representation for Sustainable Development
	Sensitizing the communities on issues of social concern
	Coordination with local bodies to improve living conditions in slums and villages
	Initiation of employment guarantee scheme.
	Coordination with local bodies to improve living conditions in slums

Achievements till date

Community Organization dept was established in year 2005 in Velhe with 3 staff. In beginning the activities implemented such as SHG, Adult education centers, Balwadi in Velhe Taluka.

Whole block is surrounded by high mountains & hills under an area of acres with around only 56000 populations in block. Though the place of taluka is nearest to Pune City it is not developed in that manner which could be identified as development block. While looking after the causes of this situation so many reasons & situations came to know.

Majority of the population work as farmers or engaged in hunting wild animals. The area remains untouched from industrialization. Therefore the inhabitants face wide scale poverty in the region. The villages are mostly situated on a hilly terrain with minimal facility for transportation. The inhabitants have very little access to educational facilities. In totally there are 130 Schools are situated in Velhe block and near about 6500 students are taking benefits in the schools.

Most of the families have very poor economical condition to provide all educational facilities to their child. Therefore they are reluctant to send their children to school. This factors contributes to the increase in drop out rates.

There are very few health centers that have a good connectivity through roads with the villages. Pregnant women prefer home delivery to institutional delivery. The pregnant and lactating women are poorly fed in the region.

The region remains cut from the neighboring developed area because there are no connecting roads or means of communication.

The villagers being illiterate are not aware of about the system of working of local self governance

Achievements till date
Formation of SHGs
In 62 villages 125 SHGs and 18 Balwadis have been formed in these villages. 300 children are taking pre primary education from 18 Balwadis at present. Census surveys of villages have been completed for 62 villages which covered 14886 populations from block. Around 1500 women have come together under the concept Self Help groups in the block since year 2002. The SHGs give a uniform platform to the women to develop their personality and to increase their social status. It also helps them in capacity building so that they are able to take important decisions about their family.
Formation of Adolescent groups
So far we have made 7 adolescent groups in the villages. These groups show enthusiasm to gain knowledge of various areas. We are trying to capacitate them about life skills, personality development as well as importance of life through various activities.

Formation of Youth groups
One youth group has been formed in Menghjaiwadi village for generating new ideas regarding social, personal, economical development of society. Main motto of this group is to identify & built leadership in youth for sustainable development of community.

Information Centres
All development projects are based on the information that are gathered on the same topic. To collect and preserve information, community department sector is going to establish an information centers in villages with the help of selected volunteers. Information about various development issues, career opportunities, government schemes, social welfare projects of various organizations, health, education, vocational trainings available in market and all other issues relating to social development of community will delivered to villagers by volunteer in suitable timings. Volunteers from 4 villages are selected for this activity with specific place in community.

Introduction
The community organization sector works in Nasik since 2005 both with the urban and rural communities where people live in poverty. In urban centers work is concentrated in slum areas and in rural areas we work in villages as well as with the tribal communities .The sector uses a planned process to activate communities to use their own social structures and available resources to accomplish community goals decided primarily by community representatives and generally consistent with local attitudes and values.

The sector works in 21 villages with emphasis on women and child development. The sector aims at identification and organization of community and ensuring democratic representation for sustainable development. Community Organization is at the root of all activities undertaken. We also aim at increasing the accountability of individuals towards governance. Through the project we hope to ensure that service delivery by various government mechanisms is up to the expectations of the people it is aimed at benefiting. The project aims at making people more aware of their rights which, in turn, enhance peoples participation and makes government functionaries more accountable to people.

We also focus on the creation of a bottom-up advocacy movement made up of elected gram panchayat. The Panchayat (local government body) representatives, who can pressurize the state government to shift more resources and decision-making power to the local level. The Panchayat representatives are capacitated by attending trainings at local level and would be more informed of the state policies and schemes, in turn pressurizing the central government for greater resources and decision-making authority

Educational activities are also carried out to create awareness regarding the importance of education. Therefore we are running preschools (Balwadis) for children in the age group of 3-6 years. Libraries and information centers are run in all of the slum communities and most of the villages. These centers increase access to useful information about vocational course, current affairs, government schemes, application forms for basic amenities etc. For the cultural development of children, we are running values education classes, music, dance and drama sessions .Most of the communities we work in have an active theatre group.

Achievements till date
The rural community intervention was started since 2006 in villages located in Girnare Area. Presently we are working in 21 villages of Nasik, Trambakeshwar and Peth,block,, of Nashik district.

Formation of Self Help Group
The Self Help Group formation was started in 2006 in the rural communities. Till date 21women SHG have been formed. The women have understood the importance of togetherness and unity because of these SHGs. They have got their identification as separate personalities through the social point. They have mastered communication skill. They have been successful in unleashing the bondages of fear and social restrictions. They have started to share their thoughts on social issues with confidence. They also get know the importance of meeting, general knowledge, money saving and money management as well as discipline in the groups. As they have become well versed in money transaction within group, the capacity of taking loan and using it judicially has increased. Beside they have got the opportunity to participate in the different sessions and trainings related starting small scale business within groups. Presently 7 groups have started income generation activities. SHG clusters are formed in three villages.
Adolescent Girls Group
Since 2007, we have been engaged in forming adolescent girls groups. These groups mostly consist of school dropout adolescent girls. Through different meetings and sessions awareness generation on various social issues are carried out with them. Because of attending regular meetings, exposure visits , Adolescent Groups Melava, tailoring class, the girls have become independent and three of them have purchased their own tailoring machines and start own tailoring business. 35 members from AGG have completed the tailoring course. We have been successful in developing reading habits among the adolescents by establishing and maintaining library facilities. At three places the libraries are run by the adolescent members for the adolescent members .Fifteen girls have obtained caste certificates and also they have collected the scheme forms to get sewing machines at the free of cost from panchayat sameetee.

Children Group
Formation of children groups started in 2006 in the rural communities. Presently we are working with 9 such groups. Many activities are carried out in the group like-value education, games, intellectual sessions, art-craft work. Because of routine activities of children groups, dropouts rate in schools has come under controll and regular attendance in the school has increased. Drop out children have been motivated to take readmissions in their schools.

Village Development Committees
Shivaji Nagar’s Village Development Committee participated in the work of desilting of percolated pond. Because of this work the number of beneficiaries has increased from 50 to 100 farmers and 38 farmers got benefit of this soil in their farms. Five villages participated in Jalyatra (Water rally) arranged by them to convey the importance of water, sanitation and tree plantations. So four villages planted bamboo grass and forest plants.
Library and community information center
In the rural communities, 13 library and community information centers have been started. From the community information center, many activities are being carried out like information regarding different government’s schemes and employment opportunities as well as trainings. The library has many books on the several subjects, like-History, social issues, health, economics, novels, stories and children book, books on lifeskill education, agricultural books, entrepreneurship skills. The youth and adolescent group as well as school age going children are the main readers of the library books. We have also kept news papers and magazines in the library. Due to these libraries, the interest towards reading is increasing in the members of library. As the farmers have got information about the advance technique in agriculture, they are doing these new experiments in their farms to get more production.

It is the significant achievement of the community information center is that 40 Women SHG members have got caste certificates from Tahsil.Many villagers applied for the government schemes under Integrated Tribal Development Programme for free buffellows, free Gharkul (Free Home), gas and water pump.

Session on right and responsibilities, domestic violence and Panchayati Raj
We have conducted various trainings with the members of Self Help Groups, AGG, Youth and local self government elected members. The objectives of these sessions were to give information to the beneficiaries about their rights and responsibilities given in the Indian Constitute and to utilize it in the contest of community life. Also the beneficiaries were informed about the procedure of the local self governance and how to show involvement in the local governance. This activity made the impact on the community people that they started to do the complain about the various issues related community life, like-insufficient supply of kerosene and ration on ration card, to enroll their name in voting list, started to participate in gram sabha,ward sabha, to ask for sufficient water supply, to solve the problems at community level regarding domestic violence and some serious matters link them to special council cell.

Nagercoil Project area works with 45 schools and in 1 slum community.

Awakening Jagriti works through following sectors for the development of community

	Community Participation		Health
	Education		Infrastructure, etc.

Community Participation
Project aims at promoting and supporting community organization in various urban and rural communities to develop a social structure made of nodes. An important outcome of community organization as a dynamic process is community ownership.

We are working with poverty driven areas and people living here are illiterate, they are unaware of their rights and duties. We also works with local government bodies to ensure that they are effective, include the leadership of women, are directly accountable to local people, and provide access to resources and information.

We also aim to achieve increased direct representation within decision making bodies for social reform.

We aim at sensitizing community members on their rights and responsibilities. In communities where we are working people are ignorant about their rights provided by the constitution of India which is considered as essential for the personality development of every individual and human dignity. These are related to life, freedom, equality and dignity of individual.

Most of the men, youth and women’s in communities are addicted through different addiction like Alcohol which influence their behaviours and can be linked to violence.

We aims in developing a social network amongst people from communities that we are working with and other organizations This network will work towards ensuring peoples participation for public accountability and getting together to fight problems faced by the community which will lead to community empowerment.

We aim at developing capacities amongst people for their participation in Local self governance.
Project and Activities

Enhance people’s participation for public accountability and community empowerment and development of community organization process through people centered processes

Identification and organization of community
Capacity building programme was conducted to enhance the capacity of villagers and community people.

Sensitization of communities about their rights and responsibilities
Awareness level on Rights of the community was analyzed, accordingly awareness was generated on rights and responsibilities, Sessions were conducted on Rights & Responsibilities to avail all the rights framed to them by Indian constitution.

Ensuring sustainable development through democratic representation

Sensitizing the community on the issues of social concern
Social problems were identified at the community, awareness generated on domestic violence moreover a core group was formed at the community to address the social violence and legal aid and networking with other NGO and Govt agencies was provided them to avail and protect themselves from the violence.

Coordination with local bodies to improve living condition in slums and villages
Social Network is identified and awareness created through social day celebration at the community and taken them various govt department to know the functions of the system and role of it and even information centre will be set up at t he community to provide them information regarding govt schemes, weather, etc.

Initiation of panchayati raj (local self governance in villages)
Awareness generation on local governance, make them participate in local governance for this training, Exposure visit are conducted at the community.
Achievement Highlights
Adult Literacy
Students from the Adult Literacy class get recognization in the community they were taking active part in the development action of the community even possessing power in the SHG as leader, secretary. Certificates were issued to the students.

SHG:
Three groups were functioning well in the community, Rojamalar, Thulasi and Star (Men) SHG. They are sustaining themselves by new small ventures and they were ready to start new ventures at they receives bank loan.

Reenrollment of Drop outs
The community where we work with us is an vulnerable poverty driven area which resembles in a huge number of dropouts in the community as 30% of children were not going to school or not send to school when we intervened and instead of that the children are sent to begging But now due to our regular intervention dropout range decreases to a large extend that now as there were less than 6% of children remaining as dropouts in the community remaining children were reenrolled in schools.

Community Development Committee
CDC was formed at the community and the CDC took active participation in community development initiative. Signature Campaign organized by CDC for:

	Drinking water facility for the community
	Cleaning the common Toilet for the community
	Fighting with government officials to get caste certificate. (CDC members protest at taluk office as there was no response, they went to collector office and made a protest to get the certificate and the collector had promised to give the certificate very quick and he had spoken with the responsible person at the place. The news were published in more local news papers and gained a wide publicity of the issue.

Youth Group
Youth Group formed at the community was very strong as they took initiative for various development activities. Youth group was affiliated with Nehru Yuva Kendra (NYK) and registered under Tamilnadu Association.

All events in the community was celebrated by youth group such as

	Independence Day		Pongal
	Diwali		Plantation of trees, etc.

Cleanliness Action Programme at the Community
Cleanliness Action Programme was planned at the community, the community people are ready for the programme and were interested in making their community clean.

The community people themselves engaged in to action where there is a remarkable change occurs which is stated as an unexpected action where as the whole canal was cleaned by the community.

Around 100 community people participated in the programme, our SHG women, youth members and even the representation from the whole community was visible in the action.