A Joint ToT on Social Mobilization for Leaders of SCGs & Co-Ordinators Under NERTPS-IBSDP On Capacity building and skill development of women for women sericulturists of BTC, Assam, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh

Date: 2nd may 2017

Venue: Prasanti Tourist Lodge, Tezpur, Assam

Sponsored by: Director of Sericulture –Assam, Director of Sericulture and Weaving – Meghalaya, Department of Textile and Handicraft- Arunachal Pradesh and Ccentral Silk Board, MoT, GoI

The Institute of Integrated Resource Management (IIRM) organised a ToT for leaders of SCGs and co- ordinators of IIRM on Leadership development under its NERTPS-IBSDP. 21 Participants of BTC, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya along with 3 Coordinators of the institute attended the programme. The objective of the programme was to make the participants aware of the process of women empowerment and various aspects of women empowerment. Even though women empowerment is a broader concept, specific contents were covered within the 4 days training such as community mobilisation, leadership qualities, types of leadership and application of different styles depending upon the situation, Participatory rural appraisal, attitudes to deal with conflict and styles of conflict and application of different styles , strengthening communication and listening skills, basic facilities provided by govt on education and health to community members, to help participants aware of gender discriminations and gender biasness while intervening in a community as a group.

The first day session covered two major contents namely community mobilisation and Participatory rural appraisal.


Community Mobilisation

Social mobilization is a process that raises awareness and motivates people to demand change or a particular development. It is mostly used by social movements in grassroots groups, governments and political organizations to achieve a particular goal, and in most cases, the process of social mobilization takes place in large gatherings, such as processions, demonstrations, marches and mass meetings. Social mobilization is also used by organizations to facilitate change. In the context of bringing changes in sericulture development of four states of Assam, Boroland, Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya, there is a need to start from the first step of mobilising people and carry forward the process to the upper level. To start the discussion on Social mobilisation, the facilitator started the day by raising questions on no of achievements done by participants and no of programmes could not be achieved after ice breaking. The participants were divided into pairing and discussed the question for half hour. The sharing of participants reveals the fact that

1. Only few participants have formed the group where as the others are completely fresh coming to attend the training individually.

2. Some of them also don’t involve them in sericulture activities.

3. One participant from Meghalaya was a staff of govt, and the other one from Arunachal Pradesh had attended one year training course on sericulture and voluntarily educating villagers on the technical aspect of sericulture.

So to impart them the basic idea on community mobilization , the facilitator drew a CHAPATI diagram by keeping social mobilisation in the centre point and its link with different aspects such as organising individuals, , group formation, meeting, sharing the problem, collective saving, collective voluntary activities, tapping govt programmes, federation building, advocacy, campaign, collective marketing and so on Activity Profile 4 To make them understand each concept chart paper was distributed, allow them to observe and identify and identify the concept in front of the big group. The extra clarifications and points were added by facilitator later on.


PRA

PRA stands for Participatory Rural Appraisal. Literary translated, PRA means to participatively understand a village. According to the terms PRA represents a group of approaches and methods that will encourage the community of a village to actively participate in raising and analyzing their knowledge of their life conditions in order to create the correct action plan. This means that by implementing PRA the community is facilitated by an outside party to analyze their life conditions that consists of existing potentials and problems in their village. They are facilitated to develop a program based on those existing potentials—and also the potentials available outside of their village that are possible to be used by the village community—to solve the problems of that community. It is an opportunity especially the marginal class, such as the women, farmers, and children, to get involved in every development process. So to make the participants learn the importance of PRA and certain techniques, they were asked to sub divided into 4 sub groups

1. Prepare a map (social and resource) of the village.

2. Prepare the daily routine of a sericulture farmer.

3. Prepare the production and marketing matrix of different products of the village including sericulture.

4. Seasonality calendar of food, occupation, source of income, sources of expenditure, diseases and festivals.

Women education programme Under this subject, Mr, Sanjib Narayan Hazarika, the District programme officer, Sarva Sikhya Aviyan, Sonitpur , Assam was invited as a resource person .He basically covered the following contents The programme is known as AXOM SARBA SIKSHA AVIJAN

Components of SSA

  • Smart school
  • Education Guarantee scheme
  • Alternative Innovative Education – saniyogi Siksha Kendra, Residential Bridge course
  • Management information system
  • Deprive urban children
  • Quality teachers training
  • Civil works
  • Inclusive education
  • Girls education- Kasturaba Gandhi Balika Bidyalaya , National programme for education of girls at elementary level
  • Research and evaluation
  • State institute of education management and training (SIEMAT)
  • Water and sanitation  Community mobilisation
  • Early childhood education

Gender sensitization

To start the discussion, a question was raised to the whole group. If given a choice, what would you like to be?? A man or a woman, few answered man and few of the members replied woman, followed Activity Profile 5 by exploring more on the why they want to be born as man or woman. The responses of the group came out with certain issues existing in the society such as less education for woman, more burden on household activities, added to it sericulture activity as a part of livelihood, early marriage, lack of property rights for women, lack of decision making power of women. To help participants to understand the difference between social and biological roles, the facilitator explained one exercise to participants. Each of the participants will be given a card with an image of some activity. Participants have to think who in their family or community is responsible/does that particular activity and then paste the picture card given to them under the heading of man, woman But if they think that the same activity can be done by either man or woman, they can paste the card in middle column of man and woman which is named as “both”. After explaining the exercise, cards are distributed to the participants. After examining the cards each participant got up and pastes the card on the sheet under heading of man or woman. Then the facilitator raised a question to the group that “imagine” there is complete freedom situation where nobody compels you to do any activity for being a man or woman and in that situation what would you like to do? Now participants are allowed to think for a while and ask to change the place of the cards if they wish to change it. Now it was challenge for the whole group to think about activities which women or men cannot do. It helped participants to be clearer on the concept of Gender.

Health

The session was taken by Mr. Pulakesh Borah, District family planning coordinator, NHM, Sonitpur Assam. He presented a power-point on evolution of NHM, the goal of NHM, the programmes undertaken under the mission, the facilities provided to the community under this mission. At last he showed a film on “Antenatal checkups and health checkups during pregnancy”

Major inputs taught –
1. Maternal & child health
2. Family planning services
3. Adolescent Reproductive health
4. Prevention & Management of RTI
5. Water, sanitation and hygiene in school health programme

Implementing Agency : Institute of Integrated Resource Management
Technical Partner/ Funding Partner : Directorate of Sericulture, Govt. of Meghalaya, Shillong & CSB, Govt. of India
Learning Partners : 20 Nos. of Groups