PROGRESS REPORT FOR THE PERIOD April 2002 to March 2003

MYRADA started working in Dharmapuri in 1984, with a small project in Thally Block supported by HOPE-Canada. It’s work was appreciated by the local communities as well as recognized by the government. In 1989 it entered into partnership with PLAN International on a child-focussed community development programme. Around the same time, it also started to partner the Tamilnadu State Women’s Development Corporation on a rural women’s credit and empowerment programme, taken up with part-funding from IFAD. Today, Myrada-PLAN Dharmapuri Project is working in 9 Panchayat Unions covering 650 villages. Out of this, 330 are the Plan sponsorship villages and the rest are non-sponsorship villages. It is working with 18,000 poor families, including 4,200 families with children covered under PLAN’s sponsorship programme. For administrative purposes, the area has been divided into 9 sectors. The Project employs 38 staff.

Major Activities

The following are the details of the programme undertaken by the MPDP during reporting period.

1. Community Health

The Project’s Child Survival and Safe Motherhood (CSSM) programme currently covers 64 remote villages, including many tribal communities. Under CSSM, programmes like awareness creation, capacity building of community level workers on Community Managed Primary Health Care System (CMPHC) to ensure availability of their services to the community, ante-natal and pre-natal care services, growth monitoring of children (0-6 years) are the focal activities. To sustain the process, linkages have been established with government Health Department for support and services. CSSM messages have been also displayed in 300 villages through wall painting and brochures. Under Early Child Care Development (ECCD) programme, the Project has established 53 ECCD centers in remote villages covering children of 3-6 years address malnutrition through supplementary nutrition program; growth monitoring, and creative learning. Attention is being given to cognitive growth, psychomotor coordination, language and communication, and social and emotional growth of children. Linkages have been established with ICDS (Integrated Child Development Scheme) and TINP (Tamilnadu Integrated Nutrition Programme). The conduct of Health Camps has included 2 eye camps and 7 gynaecology camps with the support of specialists and service organizations.

2. Education

Current focus is on improving the quality of education in Government primary schools, for which the Project has developed a services package referred to as Participatory Approach in Quality Education (PAQE). The package of programmes under PAQE includes:

• Community awareness on education quality of primary schools and their role/participation in ensuring quality education to their children.

• Strengthening of Parent – Teachers Associations (PTA).

• Upgrading the skills of teachers - Joyful learning, improving the classroom activities and creative learning atmosphere in schools.

• Additional teachers’ support to maintain Student - Teacher ratio of 40: 1.

• Focus on co-curricular activities to provide opportunities for children to express talents and retain interest in learning.

• Developing academic performance indicators in consultation with community and the Education Department. Individual schools are monitoring the progress and communities are reviewing it from time to time to assess development.

• Introduction of Patron scheme to raise contributions for PTAs to develop corpus funds for school betterment.

• Improving performance in 20 High schools where the pass percentage in 10th Standard is 25% or below.
  
  The PAQE Programme currently covers 70 government schools. The impact has been very encouraging and PTAs are gradually taking more responsibility in the over all development of schools.
  
  3. Child Development
  
  Apart from the interventions mentioned above, the Project has promoted 289 Children Clubs at village level and 9 Children Collectives at Sector level to create opportunities to interact, develop leadership qualities, enhance knowledge, become aware of Child Rights, etc.
  
  4. Livelihood Interventions
  
  Direct financial interventions for income generation have been greatly reduced from their former scale. Instead, the focus is on training and linkages with banks for credit support. All self help affinity groups (1,518 groups) have undergone EDP training (under Tamilnadu Mahalir Thittam) and oriented to support income earning activities for their members, and a review of their SAG lending confirms that this is, indeed, happening to a significant extent.
  
  However, due to drought-like conditions in the current year, the Project supported 1,000 farmers with improved variety ragi seeds and required bio-fertilizers as a measure of concern to ensure food security.
  
  5. Non-Formal Technical Training Center (NFTTC)
  
  In Myrada, this is the first such center of its kind offering longer-duration residential courses for boys and girls (highschool educated, incomplete schooling, drop-outs) in various trades such as Welding, Fitting, Turning, Electronics, Electrical, Two-wheeler Mechanism, Plumbing & sanitary works and Home Appliances Services. Till date, 273 boys and 88 girls have undergone training in different trades and 229 candidates have got jobs, including 32 girls, in different establishments. It is proposed to register this Centre as an independent legal entity with a Board consisting of prominent industrialists from the area.
  
  6. Local Level Institutions
  
  The Project is currently working with the following types and numbers of institutions :
   

7. Drought Relief Programs

• 50 poor families each in 40 different locations were provided with employment by the Project for 10 days, and the wages they earned enabled them to buy food for at least a few weeks. The works included tank de-silting and deepening, tank bunding, cleaning and deepening of existing Pushkaranis (step wells), etc. As a result, apart from employment creation, the rehabilitated structures received a good inflow of water during the recent rains.

• The Project provided African Maize (fodder) seeds to 750 farmers to enable families to take care of their animals.

The Project took the initiative to promote drought resistant fodder on 1,000 acres of common lands within the project area.

8. Training

• The Project’s Gnanodayam Training Centre is developing into a CIDOR (Centre for Institutional Development and Organisational Reform). In the current year, 89 training programmes were hosted on it with a total of 2002 participants and keeping the Centre’s facilitaties engaged for 226 days.

• In addition, the Project extended professional and training services to NGOs and Government functionaries of Vellore District who will be working on the development of 84 Watersheds in the district. Professional services of the Project were also engaged by the Department of Environment and Forests to conduct PRA in 5 districts of Tamilnadu to take up Combating Desertification Programme.

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