Fellowship Programme for Tribal Community Leaders

Dear Friend,

I very much hope that you are enjoying the holiday season. From all of us here at Seva Mandir, a very Happy and Prosperous New Year to you. May 2012 brings peace and success to you and to your family. We thank you for your kindness that you gift us always. With this letter, we love to share some key highlights of year 2011.

For Seva Mandir, the year 2011 has been a year of changes and success. Ms. Neelima Khetan stepped down after 12 years of her excellent leadership (total 25 years of association with Seva Mandir) in March. Ms. Priyanka Singh became our new Chief Executive in April 2011. Seva Mandir is ready to see many more years of its successful engagement with rural communities in Southern Rajasthan in her leadership.

In October, Seva Mandir became the implementing agency for the MNREGA projects for 32 sites in rural Udaipur. It is a significant achievement as well as an indicator of the faith of the 74 Panchayats in Seva Mandir’s work. These Panchayats have endorsed us to be their implementing agency for MNREGA. Of these 32 sites that were sanctioned, the work has begun on the 22 sites. Most of these sites of pastureland development and currently the building of boundary wall is going on.

In 2011, Seva Mandir has been included in two working (sub) groups –  {i) Child Survival & Development and Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) and ii) Girl Child} constituted by the Ministry of Women and Child Development to review the existing priorities, policies, strategies, programs and their implementation for fulfilling the rights of children to survival, development (including early childhood care, early learning, elementary education). Also, to highlight emerging issues and recommendations, resources allocation and utilization for Twelfth Five Year Plan of Government of India.

Several of Seva Mandir's programs have seen a maturing in the last years. For example, in the villages where Seva Mandir organized regular immunization camps, the complete immunization of children is 60%, while in comparison villages it is only 35%.

Similarly, the work on Natural Resources is yielding a lot of benefits to the poor. Every year grass worth Rs. 52 lacs (5.2 million rupees) is being harvested from the common lands developed under this program.

In April 2011, Champa Devi from Vassela village was awarded the "Woman Exemplar Award 2011". It is another reason to look back and feel joyous to see that a community member of Seva Mandir was being recognized by rest of the society for her selfless services.

We are privileged to experience exciting stories of women like Champa Devi. A big credit goes to friends like you for this. Your support has always been the source of our emotional strength. It helps us keep going with our work. It is gratifying that with your support we have been able to create spaces where ordinary people can exercise truth force to bring about social and political transformation.

We hope you will continue to be with us in future too. Your faith and untiring support is very critical to us at the moment. Especially, when national and international scenario is changing rapidly for civil societies and the definitions of ‘development’ are being re-explored.

We believe that the full and deep impact of Seva Mandir's work lies not so much in the tangible development activities that it promotes, but more in bringing the poor and rich together and enabling them to  work for the commons of building more just  and oppression free communities.

We look forward to your continuing contribution in the year 2012 too. Wish you a very bright and successful New Year.

With warm regards,

Deepti

Dear Friends, Greetings from Seva Mandir! Hope you are well. Thank you for supporting the fellowship project. Your support towards this project strengthens the efforts of a number of village leaders in Rajasthan. These fellows work very hard to address social, political and ethical issues in their villages. Since many of these issues are deeply rooted in people's lives and socio-political structure, continuous and dedicated efforts are required. These efforts take a long time to show actual results and may cause emotional fatigue. Therefore your regular support and encouragement to these fellows is much appreciated. It would have been not possible for many of these fellows to fight against issues if people like yourself, were not supporting them. These kinds of development projects, as you would also agree with me, do not often receive much attention and support of people. A lot of times, we all expect quicker results. It is difficult for us to appreciate the complex solutions for issues that are complex in nature themselves. Similarly, in the whole set up of this program, the core idea is to bring communities together for issues that affect them by allowing them an opportunity to understand the nature of the issue, its implications on their lives and resolving these by expecting a change within themselves. It is a complex idea and much more difficult to bring it to reality. The even more daunting task is to find passionate people who are willing to spend their time in undertaking this challenge. Having these fellows who are willing to invest their time, energy and emotions to carry out these uphill tasks is certainly a bliss for all of us. These fellows, mostly come from an impoverish backgrounds themselves. They also belong to the same society and culture, the issues they take up from. We can imagine the struggles must be tiring for them to rub against the very people these fellows live with everyday. There must exist power structures and dynamics. On top of it, the societal change take place at a very slow pace. So thank you again, for standing by these fellows in their journey of helping themselves. It is not easy for anyone to support a difficult idea such as the fellowship project. We really are grateful to you for your regular support and hope that you will consider telling about this project to your other friends too. With this letter, I am also sharing a brief update on different kinds of trainings and workshops these fellows have attended in 2011. At the same time, I also take immense pleasure in informing you that the monsoon was wonderful this year. It rained a lot every where in Udaipur and the lakes filled up pretty quickly. As you know Udaipur is the most famous tourist attraction of Asia. Therefore, good rains assures a good tourist year. On the other hand, the rains may have not assured a good crop for "Maize (the corn)" because it rained a bit too much in some places. The corn is the major staple diet in this region. However, the positive side of the rains is that increased moisture of the ground will ensure good crops for winters. Though not most farmers are able to grow wheat and gram in winters, the overall availability of water has definitely increased due to good rains. Thanks once again for your generous support. We hope to hear from you on this feedback. With warm regards, Deepti

Links:

• Fellowship news

• Recent Update (DOC)

Dear friends,

Hope you are well. Thank you for your continuing support. We are very grateful to you donations and inputs .

Every time with our letter to you, we wish to acquaint you with Seva Mandir a bit more. In this letter, you will get to know about the process of our business planning.

Seva Mandir focuses on communities rather than on individual/s. The belief is that in order to bring about the durable changes in the society; the constructive work involving all the community members is important because social problems are complex. It therefore, takes longer but the outcomes are more sustainable and long lived. Therefore, Seva Mandir has a three pronged strategy –

1)      To create and strengthen institutions for development (at the village, organization and society levels)

2)      To enhance people’s capabilities for self-development (both at individual and community level); and

3)      To create sustainable improvements in the livelihoods base.

Our bottom-up approach allows creating stakes for every section of society to participate in their own development. We very much hope that you will enjoy knowing about our business planning phase that we are going through right now.

It has been a very hot summer here in Rajasthan this year. We are now all prepared to welcome the monsoon which should be here in the next week and half. Gradually it is getting humid day by day and we are trying not to let the rising temperatures effect us and are currently in the midst of the exciting organization wide planning process to develop our 7^th Comprehensive Plan.

The Comprehensive Plan outlines the strategic direction and action-plans for Seva Mandir over the next three-year plan period (2012-2015). 

Seva Mandir has been preparing Comprehensive Plans since 1990 as a way to systematically review and evolve its near-term strategic priorities across all programmatic areas.  The process of putting together the Comprehensive Plan also serves as an opportunity for Seva Mandir to reflect upon the work we have done, examine the environment we work in and evolve our strategies accordingly, within the context of past lessons learnt and the overall long-term vision of the organization.

The process for creating the 7^th Comprehensive Plan began in late 2010 and includes all levels of Seva Mandir’s tiers viz. - from the villages where we work all the way up to the Chief Executive Officer.  The Comprehensive Plan process is consistent with Seva Mandir’s bottom-up approach, with the kick-off meetings taking place at the village level with the Chief Executive present.  After these initial meetings, the staff members at the zone and block offices had an opportunity to share their thoughts, observations and information.  Using the information gathered from the field, the Programs devised their strategies for the upcoming years.  These were presented to the organization as a whole, where debate, discussion, criticism and suggestions took place.

We are now headed into the final stages of this exciting process.  Programs are incorporating the comments and suggestions into their reports, and putting the final touches in to the operating frameworks. This is an exciting time at Seva Mandir and we are really looking forward to the next few years when we can put these strategies into effect and watch the change they make.

The integrated approach allows all our partners, friends, donors and well wishers to contribute to the holistic development of our communities. Any project/program that you support for Seva Mandir is a part of this comprehensive plan. Thank you so much for regularly supporting our cause and making a difference.

We will soon be providing you with an annual report of our programs you are supporting on Global Giving. In the meantime, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

With warm regards,