Capacity Building

The basic need is the provision of simple services to the individual villagers. There are two alternatives: one is to use the departmental approach, favored by the state agencies, where an army of functionaries try, very often in vain, to serve the rural poor. The other option is to train a cadre of workers from the poor to provide the simple services needed by them

The organization of the poor nominates persons for training and after receiving training, the organization's members agree to remunerate the trained member, for services rendered. This makes the provision of services to members a sustainable activity. Under this option, the development cadre of the poor becomes the extension arm of the support structure needed to foster a framework of grassroots institutions. There are several examples of such programmes, with a few hundred professionals, reaching hundreds of thousands of the poor.

It has been found that entrepreneurial abilities within rural poor are negligible.. The organization is one forum in which the scarce resource embodied in an entrepreneurial development activist is put to use directly for an entire community. The organization, in turn, compensates the activist in exchange for his services to the community. With increased exposure to a rapidly changing economy, these rural cadres acquire the confidence and ability to perform important entrepreneurial functions for entire communities.

The organization is also the mechanism through which extension work involving practical demonstrations can reach large numbers of small farmers on a regular basis, with the additional advantage that demonstrators will get instant feed-back from potential users. Experience has shown that organizations of the poor can be used effectively in both the selection and support of individual villagers trained in specialized skills. The organization has the capability to select individuals who will continue to live in the village after training, and it has the interest to support these specialists.
SRSO’s Human Resources Development Unit became functional during the reporting period and undertook the responsibility of training and transforming human resources of the organized communities as capacity building or skills enhanced within the conceptual package of social mobilization is considered as an extremely important aspect of poverty alleviation for creating a wider 'context of opportunity' for the rural poor by enhancing their skills. The SRSO HRDU training programmes focused upon community management training skills, natural resource management and vocational training and. In addition, the HRDU held seminars, workshops and exposure visits, all focused on aspects of social mobilization and community development.

In order to make community organizations viable and functional, the HRD focused upon imparting the basic training named Community Management Skills Training (CMST), designed generically for all COs. This training, which, is designed exclusively for management capacity building of COs’ activists i.e. the community organization’s Manager and President focused upon imparting knowledge and practical skills on basic concepts of management of an organization like financial record keeping, conduct of scheduled routine meetings, interactions with government and non government agencies for community and village development etc. The activists are supposed to disseminate this knowledge to their respective CO members.

In 2004-2005, a total of 91 CMST events were conducted in which 2,000 activists of about 1,000 COs were trained. These trainings took place at the HRD Unit based in Sukkur.

Majority of rural poor have narrow income base with little capacity to absorb shocks like crop/Livestock disease or unfavorable market conditions. The purpose of poverty alleviation or income enhancement can not be appropriately served without broadening the income base of the poor household.

Vocational trainings are good tools to increase the number of bread earners with relatively secure source of income. The vocational trainings are intended to serve twin purpose of creating skilled cadre of self employed youth and to bring these services within the easy reach of villagers because the trained people belong to their villages. SRSO therefore directly arranges these trainings by hiring resource persons or through NRSP vocational institution at Islamabad or even through linkage with government departments like TBA training by Health Department.

Following trainings were thus arranged to either enhance the income generating capacity or to improve social sector services to villagers.

i) Vocational Trainings

• Tailoring Training
Educated un-employed are becoming a problem in rural villages. They are sitting idle in the hope of government jobs which are not likely to come forth due to scarcity of jobs. SRSO is trying to create self employment by providing this kind of training. Its tenure is one to two months and the trainees are expected to learn the basics of sewing so that they can be employed at tailoring shops easily on remuneration basis. Normally a local qualified practicing tailor is engaged on payment as resource person. The cost of training is borne by SRSO. Total eleven youngsters were trained who have taken up tailoring as profession.

• Candle Making Training
Load shedding in rural villages is a normal thing. Also there still are villages without electricity. Candles are important mean of light at such places. It was considered worthwhile to train female on candle making firstly for income generation and secondly to make candles easily available at village level. 15 females were trained who are now making some contribution to household income.

• Wiremen Training
This training is designed to provide basic skill of electric wiring. The training on one hand provides self employment opportunity to the trainees who are expected to have gained enough skill to run their independent shop. It is of two months duration and provided at Islamabad by V-TEC an institute established by NRSP. Twenty male members were provided this training at a cost of Rs.13,000/- per month per trainee. All the trainees are either running their shops or have been employed by others thus enhancing self/family income.

ii) Sectoral Trainings•
Trainings with World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
Agriculture in Sindh is afflicted with decade old traditional practices which on one hand result in low crop yields and on the other cause excessive wastage of water and other natural resources. These practices are also gradually reducing the fertility of land thus reducing the income level of growers which is contributing to rising poverty. In order to arrest and reverse this trend, SRSO strived to expose the growers to modern agriculture technology through entering into partnership with specialized and competent institutions. A MoU was therefore signed with WWF to undertake trainings of COs under the title of “Best Management Practices in Agriculture”.

During 2004-2005, 21 training workshops were conducted for COs of District Ghotki. Seven non-formal agriculture schools have been established as outcomes of those trainings. A proof of community members’ interest was donation from community of 2 acres of land for agricultural experiments. Graduation ceremony of 15 Master Farmer Facilitators was held on May 2005, in which DCO-Sukkur also participated and appreciated the efforts.

• Teachers Training
In some of the villages where communities have been mobilized, girls school did not exist or had become dysfunctional due to non availability of female teachers. SRSO mobilized CO members and villagers to employ local educated females to start teaching in the school on nominal honoraria. 18 such females were provided teachers training. SRSO in 2004-05 arranged in collaboration with the line department.

• Traditional Birth Attendants
Mother and Infant mortality rate is quite high in rural areas basically due to non availability of timely mother and child care services. Mid-wives practicing traditional methods are normally unaware of hygienic requirements and incapable of handling complications. If provided with birth attendants training they can handle routine cases in hygienic environments or they can identify complicated cases and refer them to gynecologist. 41 TBA were thus trained through collaboration with Health Department.

• Livestock Training
Livestock is the second major subsistence source of rural poor after agriculture. Due to primitive practices livestock often remains afflicted with diseases which are not treated either due to lack of financial resources or lack of diagnosis at early stage. Idea behind organizing this training is to provide easily accessible and affordable first aid veterinary service at village level. 50 CO members were trained by livestock department through linkage by SRSO at different villages within SRSO operational area in five districts. The advantage has been two fold– 50 people have got source of income and 50 villages have got first aid veterinary service for their animals at their door step plus peripheral villages are also benefited.

Participation in Micro-Finance Mela (Carnival)

The Institute of Management Sciences (IMS) Peshawar University organized a Micro-finance mela in Peshawar from May 16th to 19th 2005 to provide a platform to organizations and groups engaged in Micro-finance. Many of the traditional items were displayed there brought from different places of country. SRSO which set up a stall displaying products produced by its communities got the second position in Mela and won prize of Rs. 7,000/- in recognition of display of valuable items.

Practical demonstration of Participatory Rural Appraisal

PRA is used as tool of need assessment of community members. The HRD Unit conducted the exercise in village Allah Dito, UC Bachro, District Jacobabad. The tool brought expected results. On one hand, needs were analyzed while on the other hand, COs also learned the importance and method of conducting the PRA themselves.