SRSO AND COMMUNITY ENDEAVORING TO RESTORE HUMAN DIGNITY

Sindh Rural Support Organization ( SRSO ) is a not for profit organization , registered under section 42 of Companies Ordinance 1984 . SRSO is funded by government of Sindh to work in the designated districts of Sindh. This policy has been endorsed by government to achieve the goals of poverty reduction through community empowerment, skills enhancement, capacity building and development of community supported infrastructure projects, and the provision of support for income generation, enterprise development and micro credit. For this purpose SRSO organizes the local communities and develop their managerial and technical capacity. People and the government are supported in forging partnership and inculcating the sense of ownership among the people. SRSO is presently entrusted with the responsibility of fostering a countrywide network of community organizations at the grassroots level in 9 districts of Sindh and works in the following sub-sectors while applying the participatory development approach of sustainable development.

SRSO’s mandate is to alleviate poverty by harnessing people’s potential lying within the communities to help themselves and undertake development activities.

The social mobilization movement began in Pakistan in December 1982 originating in the Northern Areas. The pioneer of this movement was the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP). It gradually spread to the rest of the country under the guise of provincial Rural Support Programmes (RSPs) established by the Government of Pakistan and collaborative donor funding.

In July 2003 by the Government of Sindh, Sindh Rural Support Organization (SRSO) was established by the provision of an endowment of Rs. 500 million , that was raised to Rs. 1.0 billion in subsequent years. The Sindh Rural Support Organization has thus a history of 6 years. It started its activities initiated by NRSP in District Sukkur. NRSP had planned to cover only three Union Councils of District Sukkur. SRSO has since then expanded its programme to 23 Union Councils in five districts namely Sukkur, Khairpur, Shikarpur, Jacobabad and Ghotki. Now SRSO is working in 9 district of upper Sindh, i.e. Sukkur, Khairpur, Ghotki, Naushehroferoz, Shikarpur, Jacobabad, Larkana, Kashmore-Kandhkot and Qamber-Shahdadkot, and 425 Union Councils of these districts.

Objectives of SRSO

• The main objective of SRSO is to foster a network of grassroots level organizations in SRSO's program area to enable rural communities to plan, implement and manage developmental activities and programmes for the purpose of ensuring productive employment, alleviation of poverty and improvement in the quality of life.

• To reinforce and compliment Government of Pakistan's policy of poverty alleviation.

• To support and strengthen Govenment of Sindh's efforts to translate poverty reduction strategies into action.

SRSO's Approach

The people need social guidance to harness their potential. Such guidance is essentially needed for the following purposes:

• To get organized for pooling of their resources , cutting down overheads, achieving economy of scale, etc.

• To identify genuine leaders /activists/cadres from amongst themselves or the community. It is only these cadres and not outsiders that can bring out the willingness and harness the people’s potential.

• To identify and prioritize what the people are willing to undertake in terms of opportunities and needs and not demands which have to be provided by outside agencies (the assumption in social mobilization is that guided or blue print approach is not effective).

• To assess the feasibility of the identified portfolio opportunities and needs in terms of peoples capacity, willingness, requirement of resources and availability of resources from within and outside.

• To arrange, secure and facilitate the flow of required resources to the community; and to linkages between them and other development agencies .

SRSO's Vision

The Vision of SRSO is to foster a framework of grassroots institutions in villages located in 253 Union Councils of 9 Districts in Sindh, to harness the potential lying within the communities to help themselves.

SRSO works to release the potential abilities, skills and knowledge of rural men and women, to enable them to articulate their aspirations and to effectively marshal the resources they need to meet their identified needs. The purpose is poverty alleviation - enabling people to break the cycle of poverty, which begins with lack of opportunity, extends to the well-known miseries of economic and nutritional poverty and leads new generations to endure the same conditions. The process is social mobilization - bringing people together on new terms for a common purpose. The conceptual tools are 'social guidance' (recruiting local men and women who will take on a leadership role), advocacy, capacity building and awareness raising. The programmatic tools are training, support to institutions, micro-credit, infrastructure development, natural resource management and 'productive linkages'.

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