Social Mobilization

The social mobilization process has been taken as one of the key programme components of Poverty Alleviation Fund (PAF). The objective of the social mobilization is to create awareness among the community people (poor women, Dalit and Janajati), help them to organize, empower them for decision-making so that they can identify and prioritize their needs. It is also expected to build up capacity for preparation, implementation, operation and management of community subprojects to enhance their livelihoods.

Partner Organizations (POs) identify the settlements of target communities based on the secondary information available in the district: ethnicity, income level and access to basic service facilities. The consultation is done with concerned stakeholders and key informants. After identification of the settlement, POs facilitate communities for participatory social assessment/well-being ranking. Individual households of a settlement are categorized as the hardcore poor, medium poor, poor and non-poor by the communities themselves.

Hardcore poor, medium poor and poor are encouraged to organize into Community Organizations (CO) to ensure that the poor take decisions for themselves. Keeping the target communities at the driving seat, it encourages to take initiatives to improve their livelihoods, particularly organizing them into Community Organizations. Community Organization (CO) is formed with membership from the defined households during social assessment. At least 80 per cent of the CO members have to be poor women, Dalits and Janjatis. It is also mandatory that 50 per cent members of a CO should be women and key positions (Chairman, Treasurer and Secretary) must be fulfilled by poor woman, Dalit and Janjatis.

Community Organization (CO) with active participation of each member enlists problems, interests, needs and aspirations. After seeking necessary and relevant information, Community Organization (CO) identifies and prioritizes community sub-projects based on informed choice through a participatory manner. Community Organization (CO) also seeks necessary help and facilitation from Partner Organization (PO) for technical assistance, particularly in survey, design, market study, prefeasibility and feasibility studies. Economically, socially and environmentally viable community sub-projects, prepared with participatory Community Action Planning (CAP) process, are selected and developed into the community proposals and related project is implanted in the community. All this social mobilization is facilitated by Partner organization (PO).