Towards Partnership : The year saw a qualitative transformation in our relationship with Novib, Netherlands, which moved from support to individual projects to a partnership with Myrada. In 2001 Novib became the first of our partners to suggest an Organisational Study of Myrada as a whole, besides evaluating the Novib-partnered programmes. This exercise was followed by discussions on whether Novib could stop funding particular Myrada Projects and start funding Myrada as a corporate entity, i.e. provide core funding to Myrada, leaving the decisions regarding use to Myrada based on field requirements. This initiative from Novib emerged because our organisations share similar objectives, because experience proved that Myrada's organisational and financial systems were adequate and because Novib felt that its relationship with Myrada had reached a point where partnership had to mean something more than contractual obligations to do certain projects together; rather, it had to be a expression of confidence in the integrity of our relationship. The Core Grant proposal was finalised in 2002 and has been operational since July 1, 2003. Myrada's Senior staff meet at the beginning of the year and present their independent programmes and budgets. A participatory assessment helps to short list those programmes which foster the core objectives of Novib and Myrada. Each project supported maintains separate statements of physical and financial progress which are consolidated at the Head Office and regularly monitored.

Staff Development : In the mid 1980s, Myrada had initiated a staff capacity building programme called The Development Professionals' Training Programme (DPTP) supported by the Ford Foundation. The DPTP comprised workshops of 3 to 4 days duration spread over 3 years where a core group of senior and middle level staff of Myrada were systematically oriented to various development concepts and practices with the facilitation of expert faculty. This had a powerful impact on the organisation. A follow-up of this investment in staff capacity building was made possible with the support of the Swiss Development Cooperation, which continued upto the mid 1990s. After a gap of some years, Myrada felt the need to renew such workshops. Novib agreed that it could be included under the Core Grant. Six workshops have been conducted so far: the first on Understanding Development from a Theoretical Perspective, the second (a set of 3 workshops) on Building a Learning Organisation, the fifth on Resource Centres and the sixth on Developing Effective Presentation Skills.

HIV-AIDS-A New Area : Myrada implemented an HIV-AIDS programme called AIDS Control and Prevention from 1994 to 1997 in Belgaum District. In 2003, Myrada was invited by the Government of Karnataka to partner the Karnataka Health Promotion Trust (KHPT) on a major HIV-AIDS Awareness and Prevention Programme targeting high risk men and women. The programme is funded by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. After extensive discussions, Myrada took a considered decision to enter into partnership with the KHPT to take up this programme in Kolar, Chitradurga and Gulbarga districts. Implementation of this 5-year programme has started since February 2004. This programme calls for additional staff recruitments and the absorption of new skills in existing as well as newly recruited staff. Around 38 staff have been recruited and the required skill training programmes have been initiated. Besides these staff, a further 59 outreach workers have been identified and trained; they report to the local people's institutions.

Watershed Management : Since 1985, Myrada has focused on reducing the risk to dryland farmers through watershed management. Cumulatively Myrada's programmes have covered over 130,000 hectares of land in Karnataka, Andhra and Tamil Nadu. Myrada is currently directly involved in the treatment of 65,000 hectares of land across its various project locations. These watershed management programmes have been supported under Government projects such as DPAP, DDP, NWDPRA, Sujala, KAWAD, APRLP, etc. as well as by funds raised from our overseas partners. Apart from this involvement in direct implementation, Myrada is also involved in a supporting and advisory capacity at the Karnataka State level on the Sujala Watershed Programme supported by the World Bank, and in a supervisory capacity in Chitradurga and Kolar districts on the Sujala Programme and in Bellary district in the DFID supported programme of KAWAD. Currently, the largest proportion of Myrada's staff is directly involved in watershed programmes.

Resource Centres : Institution building remains the cornerstone of all our work. Page 17 of this report lists the categories of all the 11,077 CBOs that are currently our primary partners in the field. The latest institutions to emerge are the Resource Centres (RCs) which service between 75 to 150 community institutions each - such as self help groups and watershed associations - after they qualify to become members. All member CBOs pay a monthly subscription. The RCs are managed by 12 to 15 representatives of member institutions. RCs are not federations meeting once a month but centres that are open from 9.00 am to 5.00 pm and often later on all working days. They are staffed by a full time Manger who is a Myrada employee with over 10 years of experience, and supported by trained community resource persons - selected by the RC Management - who carry out various required functions in the field. The RC Manager works to support the Management Committee and execute its decisions while also facilitating it to expand its range of services in response to local requirements. RCs are approached for information and services both by their members and by others in the community. These services carry nominal fees that enable the RCs to attain self-sufficiency. Currently, there are 56 RCs spread across our various project locations; together they have earned close to Rs.11 million in fees for services provided.

Reproductive and Child Health: Myrada has been working on reproductive and child health (RCH) related issues for many years in its child-focussed project locations but it was our involvement with The Population Foundation of India that introduced a more systematic and professional approach into the programme, enabling us to learn, adapt, and innovate. A reflection on this experience shows that four things have happened: (i) It has created community-level platforms where government functionaries, Myrada-trained promoters, and self help group representatives jointly meet on a monthly basis to plan, implement and review the programme. (ii) It has enabled RCH to permeate Myrada and made it a credit-plus activity on an extensive scale with self help groups in at least 4 districts. (iii) It has been absorbed into district-level NGO networks initiated by Myrada and thus, a number of NGOs are involved in it. (iv) It has created systems where pregnancies and child health are monitored on street/ward basis without the need for Myrada's presence at every step.

District Networks: The district level NGO networks promoted by Myrada in Chitradurga, Chamarajanagar and Kadiri continue to function well. As against general purpose networks, these networks are very focused on two or three themes, usually self help group development, watershed development, and reproductive and child health. In respect of activities taken up within these thematic areas, the members' commitment is (i) To ensure that common minimum quality standards are maintained (ii) All the required data is shared between member organisations and used to create district level data base (iii) Programme related information and capacity building inputs are shared between members in the spirit of giving and taking.

Sharing and learning : Though not a consultancy providing organisation, Myrada is frequently approached for consultancy inputs and takes them in response to requests from long-standing partners or where such engagements promise to be of learning value to Myrada, as well as where projects have incorporated Myrada's strategies in their project designs. In this year, such engagements were undertaken on behalf of IFAD-UNDP in Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Indonesia, Myanmar, and the north-east of India as well as for Stree Shakti in Karnataka and the Total Sanitation Programme in Tamilnadu.

Staffing : 112 staff were newly recruited in the year, taking the total staff strength to 445.