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The Lutheran World Federation
Lutheran World Information |
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| 21.05.2004 |
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| India: “What DWS Gave Us Cannot Be Repaid” |
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LWF Field Program Aims at Overcoming Poverty by Cultivating Self-Reliance
ALBURY, Australia/GENEVA, 21 May 2004 (LWI) – Amodi Murmu is one of the oldest women in her village in West Bengal, India. She is a leader and community spokesperson, especially for the women. Government officials visited her village, Natundihi, to see if the success stories they had heard were really true. They asked Murmu how the field program of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) Department for World Service (DWS) had helped the village. She responded: “DWS did not help us too much—not with money. But what they gave us is far more valuable and cannot be repaid. They have given us confidence and have shown us the way to work for ourselves.”
Mr Howard Jost, director of the LWF/DWS program in India narrated Murmu’s story before participants in a DWS consultation for the Asia region. “More than half of the world’s poor live in India. Three hundred and fifty million people live below the poverty line, on less than one US dollar a day. Our approach to overcoming poverty and suffering in a sustainable way is to cultivate self reliance,” he stressed.
He quoted Murmu as having said to the government officials: “We don’t want this progress to stop. Our children and grandchildren will continue this effort. They will go to good colleges. They will become doctors and lawyers and teachers. Rich people and poor people are all the same. The only difference between them comes from their opportunities. We are making our own opportunities!”
Jost said there was “a multitude of obstacles” to reducing the suffering of the poor. “But we consider that the people in each place are the ones who are best able to take the necessary actions to overcome those obstacles, if they have been empowered to do so.” DWS India works in communities for four to five years and then withdraws, moving its resources to new communities, and leaving behind people who are capable of continuing the process of economic and social development without further support.
“We see ourselves as cultivators rather than manufacturers, as enablers rather than providers, as facilitators rather than doers,” Jost said. DWS India does not provide charity or relief, except in cases of emergency. “Our contribution is to enable people to do things for themselves.”
Community’s Willingness to Contribute Resources a Measurement of Self-Reliance
Jost cited one measurement of self-reliance as the willingness and ability of a community to contribute its own money and work toward accomplishing its goals. The people’s ability to mobilize resources from governmental and non-governmental organizations is the next step. In 2003, DWS India spent USD 2.2 million on three projects. The program’s contribution was 58 percent, while the remainder, amounting to USD 920,000 came from the communities themselves.
DWS India made considerable progress in 2003. The program withdrew from 36 communities having achieved self-reliance; and intensive work was commenced in 388 new communities. This represents a 21 percent increase in the number of communities with which the LWF field program is working. There are 1,635 communities “now walking with us on the path to self-reliance,” representing a total of 500,000 people, Jost said.
In addition, 846 new self-help groups were formed during the year, representing a 42 percent increase over 2002, and an increase of 38 percent from 2001. “So DWS India staff are now working with and walking with twice as many groups as they were at the end of 2001,” Jost said. This has been accomplished with staff and expenditure at about the same level as 2002. But expansion to the existing programs is not foreseen Jost cautioned, as both staff and budgets already are being stretched to full capacity.
The May 16-21 meeting near Albury in New South Wales, Australia, focused on the theme “Quality Monitoring for Impact,” with an emphasis on defining desired outcomes and their prerequisite assessment methods. In attendance were directors and other staff members of the four DWS programs in Asia—Bangladesh, Cambodia, India and Nepal—and representatives of donor agencies supporting LWF/DWS in the region. (687 words)
(Written for LWI by Linda Macqueen, editor of The Lutheran, the Lutheran Church of Australia magazine.)
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