Formation & Strengthening of Community Based Organization (CBO):

Women SHGs: The name “Lok Prerna” is the combination of two hindi words, where “Lok” means the “People” and “Prerna” means the Inspiration”. So the name of the organization says that, it is an organization willing to inspire people for their self sustain and since the last eighteen years, it is very proud to say that the organization is fully committed to strengthen the human rights and to improve the accessibility of the community towards their entitlements for their self sustainability.

From the inception period, Lok Prerna felt that, until and unless community people become organized, the dream of a society free from all kind of exploitation and discrimination will be a dream for ever. So, the organization adopted the process of formation and strengthening of Community Based Organization (CBO) in the rural area as the main theme to make the community more powerful. But as the organization is devoted to empower the lowest rungs of the society, so, the organization gave special emphasis to organize the women of the society first seeing that the women are in the heart of the family, community and in the total ecological system too, but on the other hand, women are the most marginal and vulnerable group of all the social segments in this patriarchal social order.

In the first ten years of Lok Prerna, the organization conducted a survey to measure the plight of women and found that they are the silent sufferers of economic marginalization, depleting forest cover, lack of drinking water and irrigational facilities, malnutrition, wage discrimination, property deprivation, social deprivation, desertion by husbands, dowry and have practically no “say” in the decision making process whether it is in the household level or it is in the matters of local governance like Panchayat. There on the organization started formation of “Mahila Mandals” or “Gogo dare” (women’s groups) to unite the poor rural women first through encouraging saving and thrift. Then the organization started to facilitating economic development of those groups by imparting different vocational and entrepreneurship development trainings and the organization able to form and strengthen 285 Mahila Mandals in the Devipur, Mohanpur blocks of Deoghar District, in the Jarmundi and Masalia blocks of Dumka District and in the Amrapara, Pakuria & Maheshpur blocks of Pakur district. Lok Prerna also imparted skill development trainings to 3755 women of those 285 SHGs and mobilized funds to the tune of Rs 18 lakhs from different sources to support the income generation activities. When those groups become economically independent, lok Prerna started to train them for the women leadership building for the long lasting coordination and an independent cooperation with the local government authority in the context of ensuring the entitlements from the state level aid programmes. By this way, Lok Prerna made all these groups so empowered that they started to take over actions and representing women’s interest in different levels without any external support which bring the sustainability for those groups.

In the next eight years of the journey, Lok Prerna once more devoted to empower the women to bring them in the decision making process through their economic upliftment and formed another 859 women SHGs in the most interior villages of Deoghar, Dumka, Pakur, Jamtara and Giridih districts of the Santhal Pargana Region. In this phase too, the organization organized basic skill development trainings for the SHGs and also created some master trainers through this training. Inspite of imposing treads to the SHGs for income generation, Lok Prerna always taken up the method of conducting need assessment survey with all the groups and accordingly organized training programme on their selected treads for their income generation. Not only that, Lok Prerna also took initiative for the market link up of the SHGs to sell their product and able to arrange SHG melas in different Towns since the last eight years. Lok Prerna also arranged marketing of the other SHG productions like Tassar, Khadi, crafts, etc.

All these initiatives of the organization towards the women empowerment become success again when the 743 groups out of 859 groups started earning some amount of money. The women also able to get rid of money lend from the local money Lenders on exorbitant rate of interest. On the other hand, the socio-political empowerment make them encouraged to participate in the decision making process. By this time, these groups felt that they become mature enough to walk productively by them self, Lok Prerna introvert holding up from those groups from the year 2009. Now, Lok Prerna is working hard to empower the rest 116 SHGs as they can also start walking on their own legs.

In this woman empowerment initiative through making the women economically empowered, lok Prerna able to upgrade the socio-economic status of 12139 women approximately after the 18 years efforts.

Kishan Club: To organize the poor and marginal farmers to ensure their rights and to improve their access towards the government services, Lok Prerna took the initiative for the formation of Kishan Clubs in the rural areas. In the first ten years of the organization, Lok Prerna formed a total number of forty seven Kishan clubs in the sixty five villages of Debipur, Jarmundi, Amrapara, Pakuria, Maheshpur blocks of Deoghar, Dumka and Pakur District of Jharkhand state respectively.

In the first phase, Lok Prerna united the farmers and made them aware of their rights and entitlement from the different government schemes. Besides that, the organization also made them aware of the benefit of the Kishan clubs to raise their voice to get their demand. Not only that, the organization also conducted different training programme with the members of those Kishan clubs. Firstly, the organization provide the farmers basic trainings on the record keeping, management of group dynamics ands also facilitate them to build up cooperation and coordination among the group members and also with the government agencies. In the second phase, Lok Prerna organized training on the other issues like sustainable agriculture, dry land farming, multi cropping, cultivation of cash crops and vegetables, etc. for the long term production, cash control and also to increase their agriculture productivity.

Lok Prerna also provided the training support on the land and water conservation methods to all of these Kishan Clubs and tried to make them so strengthen that they can start walking on their own feet and finally able to do that as all of the sixty five Kishan clubs formed by Lok Prerna in the first ten years of the organization, started walking on their own feet.

In the next eight years also, Lok Prerna started to replicate the previous model of Kishan Clubs in the new villages too and formed another 291 farmers clubs in the 291 targeted villages of the Masalia and Ramgarh Blocks of Dumka district, Devipur and Mohanpur Blocks in the Deoghar district. Giving then capacity building supports on the different issues was one of the major roles of Lok Prerna in this phase also and this time also Lok Prerna able to linked up those clubs with the different government and non-government

agencies to make those groups sustainable and become succeeded to do that. Now all of those 291 Kishan Clubs become self dependent and performing their roles and responsibilities through the cooperation and coordination within the group and out side the group, too.

Presently, Lok Prerna again formed 53 Kishan clubs in the Sarwan, Devipur, Mohanpur and Deoghar blocks of the Deoghar District with the same objectives and is in the process to strengthen these clubs to bring sustainability among them.