COMMUNITY MOBILIZATION

SHGs, Farmers Clubs, KLM Groups, Balavedi and its Federations are the backbone of JEEVANA, in the implementation of various development activities in the operational areas. There are 679 such CBOs, federated into 44 Village level Federations, (Jeevana Swasraya Federations - JSFs) which are again federated into 4 District/Regional level Federations of People’s Organizations (RFPOs) on a Regional/District basis. Jeevana took sufficient effort to form, promote, facilitate and sustain these groups with its continuous involvement and handholding through village level coordinators and voluntary workers. The strength of the SHGs and Federations is the trained leaders, who are dedicated and committed to voluntary services. Besides capacity building, thrift and credit programmes are going on well. The CBOs/SHGs are capable of manage the resources they pool, plan and implement their own development interventions and supplement the development activities of Jeevana at their place and for their members. Of late, they intervene in the development activities of the LSGs and acquire reputation for their effective involvement in the mainstream development. Continuous monitoring and evaluation of the field level programmes are taken up the leaders in association with the village coordinators.

NATURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

The Natural Resource Management Division of Jeevana is working to ensure regeneration, development, maintenance and sustainability of the deteriorating Natural Resources – Land, Water and Biomass, with the effective participation of the people and CBOs. The vision of the department is Sustainable management of natural resources for achieving food, nutritional, environmental and livelihood security in the country. Its Mission is developing location specific, cost effective, eco-friendly conservation and management technologies for higher input use efficiency, agricultural productivity & profitability without deteriorating natural resource base. The Mandate of the division is to plan, coordinate and monitor R & D programmes for sustainable agricultural production and resource conservation and to serve as knowledge repository in the field of natural resource management.

Community Health

Jeevana’s Community Health promotion is defined as any combination of educational and social efforts designed to help people take greater control of and improve their health. Health protection and health services differ from health promotion in the nature or timing of the actions taken. Health protection and services include the implementing of laws, rules, or policies approved in a community as a result of health promotion or legislation. Any combination of actions aimed at ensuring health of the people could be the result of health promotion efforts such as members of a community lobbying their board of health.

SHANTHI INTEGRATED REHABILITATION CENTRE FOR ADDICTS, an affiliated part of the community health department is started its functioning as a Counseling Centre in 1992 with the financial and technical assistance from the Central Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (MSJE). In the initial stage it is only an awareness generation & counseling centre for alcoholics and drug abusers. The centre was at Peruvayal, Calicut. Thousands of alcoholics were given treatment as out-patients in this centre. In recognition of the centre’s yeomen services in the area of promoting de-addiction, Central Ministry has upgraded Shanthi Counseling Centre to a 15-bedded treatment cum rehabilitation centre in March 2001. Now Shanthi Treatment Cum Rehabilitation Centre completed its 12th year of yeomen service.

The aims and objectives of the present Scheme for Prevention of Alcoholism and Substance (Drugs) Abuse are to create awareness and educating the people about the ill-effects of alcoholism and substance abuse on the individual, the family and the society at large. Shanthi as a Drug Awareness and Counseling Centre provides, awareness building, motivational counseling, screening of abusers/addicts, referral services and follow-up services to the community. Similarly, as a Treatment-cum-Rehabilitation Centre, it provides services like preventive education and awareness generation, identification of addicts, motivational counseling, detoxification/de-addiction, vocational rehabilitation, after care and reintegration into the social mainstream etc., to the community. Shanthi Treatment & Rehabilitation centre extends its service to the people caught up in the web of drug addiction. The Centre conducts drug awareness building programmes and provides treatment and rehabilitation to the substance dependents and their families. The Centre also aims at physical, psychological and spiritual recovery of the patient, leading to the behaviour modification and qualitative changes in his/her life style.

SHANTHI DE-ADDICTION CENTRE
Drinking water and sanitation

"Jalanidhi", is a World Bank-assisted "Kerala Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Project" for sustained delivery of adequate quantity of water and sanitation services in rural areas of Kerala. JEEVANA is selected as Supporting Organization (SO) by the state government authority (KRWSA), for implementing two JALANIDHI-projects in Wayanad District – one in Noolpuzha Grama Panchayath (GP) and the other in Kaniyampatta Grama Panchayat. The project ensure adequate and pure drinking water supply along with total sanitation, Ground water recharging, and GP infrastructure development aiming at its strengthening and Technical and general trainings to the project stakeholders.

The activities are identification of source and storage tanks, Engineering survey for laying the pumping main and distribution pipe line, organizing and conducting Special Grama Sabhas to make the people in the village the need of community based and community managed water supply system, to get their consent and to reach at common consensus, preparing and circulating IEC materials on the scheme and the activities, sanitation mapping, formation of BG federation and exposure visit.

Besides the accomplishments explained above, the achievements of the Jalanidhi project implementation can be summarized as follows: The project ensured 57% of the ST families in the GP including the most backward ST communities – Paniyas and Kattunaikkas. The project covers 53% of the total families in the GP. Baseline data collection is carried out in 3194 families in the GP. Reformation of 20 existing water supply schemes materialized. The proposed IEC materials are completed and support of all the political parties have ensured in the implementation of the Project.

Family Development

The broad objective of the Programme is to bring the poor and marginalized families into the mainstream socio-economic life by empowering them through promoting their creative participation in the CBOs, ensuring their economic independence, fostering their leadership qualities, concretizing their self mobilized decision making and asset creation capacities. The strategy to achieve this goal is promotion of sustainable livelihood programme, bringing the participant families by making them parts and parcel of active and meaningful involvement in development endeavours of various development actors, enhancing their positive image and hope in life and promoting the value system of sharing and encouraging people to realize humanity. Now JEEVANA is supporting 169 families under SAFP-Regular Beneficiary (RB)

Tribal Development

JEEVANA has launched a tribal development programme with the financial support from National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development’s Tribal Development Fund (NABARD - TDF) in Wayanad District. The overall objective of the programme is ‘to develop and implement a replicable model that ensures household food security and improved livelihood opportunities and overall quality of life of life of the selected tribal families based on the sustainable and equitable use of natural resources’. The strategy adopted for the effective implementation of the project is to group the families into 10 each and for each group a Village Planning Committee (VPCs) is formed involving the group members. The programme philosophy lies in the WADI (Orchard) development approach which synchronizes the tribal agriculture from which they harvest different produce from different crops in different times of an year. WADI ensures them food security and safety as the cultivation methodology adopted is organic, brings adequate income by selling the surplus produce and improves their living standards by giving them opportunities to mingle with the groups and communities in marketing cooperatives. Efforts have been taken at the planning stage itself to harmonize and to properly spice the natural resource management component also which essentially supports the agriculture development that envisaged in the WADI approach. The programmes under this project can be divided into (1) Programmes for Natural Resource Management (2) Programmes for WADI development (3) Promotional Programmes for Sustainable Livelihood (4) Women Development Programme and (5) Capacity building Programmes.

Livelihood

JEEVANA has accepted livelihood promotion as a strategy to improve the economic situation of the partner families. Many families are financially supported to start an income generation programmes. This helped the families to increase their income and raise the living standard. Families are involved in different types of income generation programmes. The skill development training programme is followed by starting some income generation programmes by those gained knowledge in business management and marketing. The IGPs include Animal husbandry, mall business and several individual income generation programmes, most of them in primary sector.

Other departments and Activities
1. Integrated Development through Empowerment and Action

The aim of the project Integrated Development Through Empowerment and Action (IDEA) to bring all the development actors and other stakeholders on a single platform to avoid duplication and fragmentation of activities and resources in bringing about development and welfare of the people in the operational area of JEEVANA. Unlike other development interventions of JEEVANA, IDEA is exclusively a Diocese owned project which is entrusted with JEEVANA for implementation. Promotion of Good governance to ensure that the people get desired and righteous service in making their lives more cosy and easy is one of the programmes proposed in the Project. Here the project made the youth the instrument to involve in the PRI governance in Meppadi Grama Panchayat. 56 youth leaders trained in the modalities of good governance and they were made aware of the need of their presence in the Grama Sabha to ensure that things are going on as per rules and regulations. Now they are regularly attending the Grama Sabhas, and seeing that the youth are more alert in ensuring that the people get good service, the PRI authorities also have become very vigilant. Another important programme is to strengthen women and make them aware of their roles and responsibilities in establishing good governance in PRIs. A training programme was organized in Kozhikode in which 55 women against a targeted 120 participants for three years have attended. The training, in a sense, is very useful for the participants for they now actively involved in the Grama Sabha, raising questions to the authorities against discrimination and influencing the governance system to include more provisions for the women friendly activities. Changes in the Governance system of the Corporation and surrounding Grama Panchayats are being observed and so far found positive.

2. Facilitating Agricultural Rejuvenation Measures (FARM)

Facilitating Agriculture Rejuvenation Measures (FARM) is a project launched to address the issues created by Farmer Suicide in Wayanad District of Kerala State. The project is supported by CARITAS – INDIA. There are three phases for the project. The first phase is for a period of three years, a second phase is for a period three years and the final consolidation phase is for a period of one year. Now the project is in its consolidation phase. The main aim of the project is to help the farming community, especially the victims of the farmers’ suicide to come out the causalities generated by the suicide of the head of the family. A research study was conducted on the reasons and causes of farmers’ suicide and the findings were consolidated and published. Based on the research findings, the programmes are designed and implemented. The programmes include Capacity building on sustainable agriculture, promotion of organic farming, Promotion of alternate income generating programmes and befriending. Befriending Programme is the highlight of the project as many families among the farming community has saved from committing suicide and brought back to normal life. The victims were given financial assistance to start most suitable income generating activities suited to the taste of the beneficiaries. Another highlight of the programme is that the district administration and the local self government institutions are converged to fulfill the objectives of the project. In this effort all the 24 Grama Panchayats and the only one Municipality in the District had joined hands so that the implementation of the project was very fruitful. JEEVANA was entrusted with Pozhuthana, Meppadi and Kaniyampetta Grama Panchayats. 288 victims are subjected to befriending, organized 10 farm groups and 5 special groups of widows, around 200 people participated in the training cum capacity building programmes and 400 acres of land brought under organic cultivation involving 400 farmers including the tribes. Special attention was given to the tribal community as it was observed that there is drastic increase in the number of tribes committing suicide.Unfortunately due to heavy landslides and continous rainfalls, whatever we have achieved for the last few years have been completely lost in 2018 and 2019. Hence we seek your materials as well as financial assistance to rebuild the community.


Kit distribution at Vythiri, Wayanad-2019

3. Kerala Labour Movement

Majority of the people of the Diocese is daily wagers and traditional artisans. While the labourers in different sectors have their own organizations to take care of their interests, the people in the above said categories have no such backing of any kind of organizations. So, they are discriminated, have no way forward towards further development and sustenance. In a sense they are in the unorganized sector. The Catholic Church in Kerala wanted to do something meaningful in the case of this category of people and decided to organize them and empower them to claim for their rights and privileges and make them competent enough with the organized sector. And the initiative is named as Kerala Labour Movement – in abbreviation KLM. One of the major programmes under the auspice of KLM units is enrolling labourers of different categories in the unorganized sector. As of now 551 labourers from the unorganized sector has been enrolled in different labour welfare schemes. Another intervention of the KLM department of JEEVANA is availing a grand of Rs. 10,800/- each for 5 senior citizens from among the domestic workers. Other important activities of the groups are awareness generation, capacity building, parish ministry and conducting spiritual programmes in association with the concerned parish community and JEEVANA. The groups are also involved in thrift and credit programme. These groups are also federated at Regional level and have effective and functional Regional Governing Councils. Every month individual units meets in every parish and every Federations meet quarterly in their respective regions. Staff from JEEVANA provides handholding and mentoring services to these groups and it helps to build up these groups in a most effective way.

4. Micro Insurance Programme

The micro-insurance programme which includes mainly healthcare insurance has coverage of 1919 people in two major insurance companies – 594 in National Insurance Company (NIC) and 325 in Life Insurance Company (LIC). The programme is very helpful to the poor families, and the families under cover get assisted for meeting hospital expenses and medicine costs. The annual premium for the health insurance policy is 165 and a maximum of Rs. 10,000/- is claimable for one case of treatment. Though there are a number of members left behind without enrolling in the health insurance schemes, we could not cover at least 50% of the total members of the SHGs fostered and promoted by JEEVANA. However, we could avail an amount of Rs.152242/- as medi-claim from NIC, and Rs. Rs. 58800/- as scholarship from LIC. Another amount of Rs. 90,000/- (Rs. 30000/- each for 3 cases) has availed as death claim from LIC.

5. Functional Vocational Training

The aim of the project is to train the youth in an employable trade or other rather than allowing them to be remaining unskilled and without employment all through their life. In a state like Kerala, where unemployment is in its peak due to lack of skills that demand the global competitive employment market, this type of training is necessary to address the issue. The project proposes to empower the youths and school drop-outs by building livelihood skills through organizing and conducting vocational training. Skill development training programmes are going on in the operational area of JEEVANA, especially in Wayanad, Malappuram and Palakkad Districts. The first batch of 15 trainees in automobile 4 in electrical and 3 in welder trades are in good momentum at Don Bosco Tech, Sulthan Bathery, Wayanad and begun in July 2013.