CASA Core Program, India
People planting rice in India. Photo: Peter Williams/WCC |
The Church's Auxiliary for Social Action (CASA), is non-governmental organization (NGO), autonomous and registered, that has been working in the fields of disaster mitigation and social development in India for the last 55 years.
CASA is the outreach arm of 24 Protestant and Orthodox Churches in India, and has been officially mandated by the National Council of Churches of India to carry out emergency relief and long-term development activities on behalf of the member churches, regardless of barriers of religion, ethnicity, tribe, caste, and political affiliation.
CASA operates in 33 different locales in 4,671 villages in 13 states and reaches out to some 3,500,700 grassroots people. Of this total, 60 percent come from the scheduled caste, 16 percent from tribal groups, and 24 percent from other marginalized groups.
India has the second largest population in the world and this exploding population growth continues to entrench poverty in the country, together with other factors such as social exclusion, gender discrimination, absence of basic education, and healthcare. Social fragmentation is based on caste, religion, gender, ethnicity, and language. The gap between the rich and the poor further aggravates these divisions. The most affected sectors are the rural landless, tribal people, dalits, children, and women.
CASA's work focuses on these marginalized groups. The primary objectives of CASA Core Program are: 1) to facilitate change in the villages through direct participation; 2) to provide skills to beneficiaries; 3) to strengthen community organizations so that they build livelihood support base and mitigate disasters; and 4) to promote gender inclusiveness in all activities.
CASA's core program components are sustainable livelihood and local self-governance; capacity building, planning, monitoring, and evaluation (PME); advocacy; networking; and alliance building. All related activities are ultimately directed toward changes in government policies for the benefit of poor people.
CASA's aim is to enable people's organizations to advocate for their own issues through networks of grassroots organizations. This is a new strategy for CASA based on an emphasis towards a rights-based approach to development. Church World Service and the Presbyterian Hunger Program help fund CASA programs.
This project will benefit some 50,000 villagers. The expected outcomes include: 1) increasing access and control over local resources by the referral communities and promoting their sustainable use and management for self-reliance and livelihood support; 2) promoting and sustaining food and income security; 3) enabling the participation of grassroots organizations in local governance; 4) operating the PME system at the community level; 5) training people's organizations to take over their development activities; 6) facilitating issue-based advocacy through networks and forums; and 7) identifying and building alliances with strategic stakeholders. These outcomes can be measured by bigger voter turnouts in local elections, more land titles distributed to the poor, more jobs created, increase in numbers of fully operational local NGOs, and grassroots organizations, etc.
CASA's planning, monitoring, and evaluation system has facilitated the empowerment process by helping people's organizations accept ownership of the development process. Various formats and procedures were tested, some of which included: household surveys, village profiles, post disaster surveys, and resource center data profiles. A PME manual was completed in early 2003 and is being used as the basis for monitoring and evaluation of its core program.
Support for Church World Service, along with a generous contribution from The Presbyterian Hunger Program, helps make this program possible.
Updated 10/11/04
More On • Civil Society • Community-Based Development • Women and Children