Village Planning

The village planning process was initiated in the Dongargaon blocks of Rajanandgaon district with the support of Unicef. It focuses on how services could converge on the child so that the child grows and develops to its full potential and complimenting this convergence with a communication drive to promote behavior change. The program objective was to create awareness leading to empowered communities for action, including planning, implementing and monitoring activities related to children with participation from the most vulnerable sections, ensure that the planning is followed by ongoing monitoring and empowerment of the communities with a strong partnership between communities and functionaries, support functionaries to respond to community needs by providing timely and quality services , ensure that programme outputs and results are sustainable.

To realize the above objectives initially the training of the village level facilitators on the village planning (VP) was made. The training entailed a series of exercises in which the participants put themselves in a community situation and assess and analyze their own situation; explore alternatives and potential actions; develop an action plan for development; and monitor progress against these plans. The trained facilitators worked with communities in 107 villages over a 5 day period in each revenue village where they facilitated various exercises including household surveys to help them assess the situation related to health, nutrition, education, water and sanitation. Initial assessment tools, techniques and processes used include: Village or social mapping, Rapport and confidence building, Participatory situation analysis, resource mapping, time line analysis, seasonality ,weighing and plotting every child, disease-health expenditure analysis, wealth ranking, water testing and review of methods to protect water sources, Village contact drives, entry point activities, e.g. cleaning of the village, repairing small stretches of roads. Daily meetings with community groups to analyze and discuss results were held to facilitate the community’s understanding of the issues related to children and begin looking for possible solutions.

These exercises also provided opportunities to discuss in-depth issues related to sex ratio (female foeticide), teenage marriages and other behaviors (such as delayed introduction of breast feeding) that hinder growth and development. The participation of village functionaries from different sectors is an integral part to these discussions and leads to a better understanding and appreciation of the roles and responsibilities of these functionaries and the building of a strong bond between the community and the functionaries. The 5 to 10 day exercises lead to the development of village action plans and the formation of village committees for overseeing and monitoring implementation.Prior to the village planning exercises a day orientation of the local representatives in the blocks was conducted. The orientation imparted knowledge about the roles and responsibility of the Sarpanch during the plan preparation and how social issues could be converged in the Gram Sabha plans.

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