Cohesion Foundation Trust striving for holistic development

Annual Report 2014–15

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Contents

MESSAGE FROM CEO ......................................................................................................................... 2

ABOUT US .......................................................................................................................................... 4

APPROACH ..................................................................................................................... 4

SECTION 1 EDUCATION ................................................................................................................... 6

SECTION 2 HOLISTIC COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT ......................................................................... 8

2.1 SAMRUDDHI ........................................................................................................ 8

SECTION 3 WOMEN EMPOWERMENT .......................................................................................... 11

3.1 RIGHTS TO PRODUCTIVE RESOURCES ...................................................................... 11

3.2 SWABHOOMI KENDRA FOR IMPROVING LEGAL ACCESS AND OWNERSHIP TO PRODUCTIVE

RESOURCES ....................................................................................................... 16

3.3 PROMOTING LIVELIHOOD SECURITY AMONG WOMEN FARMERS ................................. 17

SECTION 4 SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE AND LIVELIHOODS ......................................................... 19

4.1 WADI ............................................................................................................. 19

4.1.1 Swachh Bharat Abhiyan-Awareness Campaigns .............................................................22

4.2 PROMOTION OF SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE THROUGH NO PESTICIDE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES

....................................................................................................................... 23

SECTION 5 TRAININGS AND EVALUATIONS ................................................................................... 24

5.1 DEVELOPING UNDERSTANDING ON PRA CONCEPT AND TOOLS-ENTREPRENEURSHIP

DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE (EDI) .................................................................... 24

SECTION 6 NETWORKING AND ADVOCACY ................................................................................... 25

SECTION 7 SUPPORT, RESEARCH AND ADVOCACY ROLES-AN OVERVIEW ..................................... 26

7.1 SUPPORT TO MGNREGA FOR BETTER IMPLEMENTATION ........................................... 26

7.2 INTENSIVE PARTICIPATORY PLANNING EXERCISE (IPPE) FOR STATE INSTITUTE FOR RURAL

DEVELOPMENT .................................................................................................. 26

SECTION 8 PROJECT MANAGEMENT AND GOVERNANCE .............................................................. 27

SECTION 9 AWARDS RECEIVED ..................................................................................................... 28

SECTION 10 AUDIT REPORT ........................................................................................................ 29

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MESSAGE FROM CEO

In the year 2014-15, CFT gave importance towards demanding Rights for the Women Farmers. More emphasis was given on stabilizing the work done in developing integrated models of social, economical and political empowerment in a comprehensive manner. CFT has also followed the rights based approach with developmental perspective in different geographical areas. A strong work on rights of women as well as emerging role of women as decision making farmers was initiated in South Gujarat in Navsari District.

CFT has been proactive in reviewing the macro level phenomenon in rural context for making a small but effective contribution. On one hand, National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) had been taking its place for promoting rural livelihoods, while MGNREGA had been witnessing both positive and negative results in different parts of India. Cohesion contributed to NRLM by being a part of consortium to prepare Gujarat State Perspective Plan. The contribution of Cohesion was lauded by Commissioner for Rural Development Department, Government of Gujarat (GOG). One of the key achievements has been our work with 10000 women of Kutchh and Patan district for promoting livelihood security among women farmers. We have also been successful in facilitating education to the most disadvantaged groups, i.e. children of salt workers in Kutch district. This has been done with the support of America India Foundation and Tata Chemicals. The support from these agencies helped us in reaching about 100 villages and helping the children to access their right to education. Eight villages have become totally migration free in terms of education as all the children of migrant families stay back in the seasonal hostels or with their caretakers or guardians when their parents migrate.

Unfortunately, we could not contribute much in MGNREGA, even though we tried a lot. We were also a Monitoring and Evaluation Agency for Integrated Watershed Management Programme as an active member of consortium

CFT developed new partnerships during the year. A notable achievement has been partnering with different stakeholders including Corporate Sectors. John Deere Foundation, through Global Communities (CHF International), developed partnership with us for an integrated development project. This partnership has been rooted successfully. Action Aid with support of Corti Foundation developed a new partnership with Cohesion on Project named “Towards Ensuring Access to Productive Resources for Marginalized Women Farmers”.

CFT continued endeavors in Chhattisgarh – a very disadvantaged and vulnerable state. It had a series of dialogues with Civil Society Groups and Government functionaries and funding agencies. Realizing a need for a Resource Organisation, a study was initiated by Cohesion titled “Development Priorities and Status of Local CSOs – Chhattisgarh”. We intend to use the findings of this study for developing further Action Plan. Center of Evaluation (CEval), Germany pursued a study, of assessing the impact of Fair Trade on poverty reduction through rural development, with Cohesion as its Indian partner.

CFT has been assigned a prominent role in networking for the rights of Women, children and informal labourers such as salt workers. The networks such as Working Group of Women and Land Ownership (WGWLO), Sajjata Sangh, Kutch Nav Nirman Abhiyan and NAMAC involved us a lot in the governance and operational aspects of the networks.

In the end, I wish to thank all the stakeholders who supported us during the year resulting in keeping our feet firmer in the ground and taking a leading role in different networks. Support of Government both Union and State levels, International Funding Agencies, NABARD, UNICEF and

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corporate like Tata and John Deere Foundation are worth mentioning along with many other silent partners and well-wishers.

The Annual Report gives an opportunity to thank sincerely different stakeholders, who have participated actively in our voyage. I express gratitude to communities, Government, International organizations and corporate sector for developing meaningful partnerships with us. I also highly appreciate the hard work and ever-increasing zeal of Cohesion Team in accomplishing certain milestones during the year.

Thanks and Regards,

Rajesh Kapoor

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ABOUT US

APPROACH

There are certain cross cutting themes, observed in all strategic interventions to ensure sustainable development and social justice. Cohesion’s approach is community based and bottom-up to ensure the needs and issues faced by communities get represented and addressed by programs.

Strengthening people’s institutions and prioritizing women’s’ role in decision-making ensure processes that help in mainstreaming gender. On the other hand most vulnerable communities are identified at micro planning stage to empower them and help secure proper position in community-based institutions.

The following are the elements of community-based approaches, followed by Cohesion:

• Participation

• Gender mainstreaming

• Evolving inter institutional linkages

• Decentralization of resources

• Local capacity building

• Development of special groups around different interventions

• Bottom-up planning and design

• Equity in resource sharing

Mission

•Cohesion, guided by transparency and accountability, is committed to sustainable socio-economic development of the vulnerable in under-serviced areas with the special focus on women.

Vision

•We see ourselves as an organization committed to striving for a World in which people and the natural environment are in harmony with each other, a World in which people, men and women, are in harmony with each other, a world in which all have enough to meet their genuine emotional and physical needs, and a world in which the diversity of humankind is celebrated.

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Legal Compliances, Accreditations

Registration Bombay Public Trust Act 1950,

Reg. No. E/13497/Abad

PAN No AAATC2958F

12 A Certification DIT(E)/12AA/65/2001-02

80G of Income Tax Act 1961 Yes

TAN AHMC00390F

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Dr Vini, MD

Mr J.S.Dingankar, PGDRM, B.Tech

Mr Rajesh Kapoor, PGDRM, B.Tech

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Section 1 EDUCATION

One of the gravest challenges facing education for children in the villages we work is the role children play in meeting the livelihoods need of the family. This is the case for most of the families who are very low on poverty index and forced to migrate in order to ensure that atleast basic human needs are met. The poor working conditions and labor exploitation on the sites of migration does not matter because the options are limited or nil. The children are forced to migrate with parents and by force of nature get involved as child labor on these sites. Cohesion started an education programme in 2005 with support from American India foundation and TATA

Chemicals Ltd with a focus to provide alternate facility for the children of migrant communities. We called these facilities as Seasonal Hostel "Rann Shala" which acted as a school and shelter for children whose parents have migrated for work. During the financial year 2014-15 we continued our work in Kutch and Patan districts.

Objectives

• To cover high migration villages over in Kutchh district

• To saturate coverage for learning enrichment in each village – migrants & other children

• To create resource capacity to deliver quality learning at all levels, extend to government schools

• To mobilize communities to demand from government quality education up to secondary level

This year our education programme achieved coverage in 100 villages including all the villages that we set out to cover since 2005. We were able to organize village meetings with participation from more than 14000 villagers out of which 42% were women from different villages. Out of these 100 villages some were newly identified and others were from past years of our implementation programme. Therefore the issues discussed in these meetings ranged from retention of children of migrant families in hostels, regularizing attendance in schools and motivation to parents to ensure completion of minimum grade VIII for girls.

As per the notification from the education department all the schools should have SMCs and the members should have received orientation on RTE. Following this we trained 476 SMC members (60% men and 40% women) and 148 PRI members (74% men and 26% women) of 108 SMCs on RTE act from and other aspects of School Governance such as preparing School Development Plan (SDP) and importance of its implementation. Similarly, special focus was given on retaining children, especially girl child, not only in schools, but also retaining them from migrating. The trainings have been very useful as the members have become quite vocal in the village level consultations. The members have a clear vision in their minds and they are able to chalk out a plan with clear objectives to fulfill their vision. They have developed a vision of child migration free village and have decided to put up the resolutions for demand of seasonal hostel in their village. The SMC members have started thinking seriously to focus on girls’ education so that girls complete their education at least up to Gr. VIII and in some villages they have emphasized on the need for higher education for Girls. Further during this financial year we also monitored the SDPs from previous years with the help of SMCs and communities in 54 villages.

Citizen Educators have been playing a crucial role in regularizing school attendance. These CEs have been trained previously on school governance aspects but with special emphasis on providing support role to SMCs in executing their responsibilities. Post training, they all did very

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good job of regularizing a total 910 (403 girls and 507 boys) irregular children along with SMCs & communities through village level consultations. A total of 284 Citizen Educators were trained.

76 schools prepared their SDPs and submitted to concerned authorities for future course of action under their leadership. In 44 villages the SMC members are proactively taking responsibilities of following activities

• voluntary monitoring of teachers in the schools

• mid-day-meal

• participating in school events

• increasing parent teacher interaction and involvement

Our efforts in the education sector have helped us achieve 95% enrolment of the children from 75 villages. This has been possible through combined efforts of SMCs, CEs & our staff to enroll & regularize the children by separately counseling of children & parents from marginalized communities. Similarly children’s fair have played important role in signifying the need for education and the role it plays in the overall development of the society.

In 32 villages we have mobilized villagers to pass the resolution for demand of 21 seasonal hostels and got it approved. We successfully monitored 100 villages through citizen group & SMC members and found that total 379 children (B=252, G=127) took the benefit of Seasonal Hostel (SH) and 559 children (B=330, G=229) stayed back with their guardians.

Eight villages have become totally migration free in terms of education as all the children of migrant families stay back in the seasonal hostels or with their caretakers or guardians when their parents migrate. Migration retention in 40 villages remained 64% which includes children retained in seasonal hostels as well as those who stayed back with their guardians.

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Section 2 HOLISTIC COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

Cohesion’s mission of sustainable socio-economic development of the vulnerable in under-serviced areas with a special focus on women has been the main reason of our diverse interventions which on one hand may include one project with multiple components of development and on the other hand the component itself will be a one big project giving us an opportunity to deploy our skills and specialist knowledge. Transparency and accountability at all stages of implementation and disciplined and experienced staff at the field level have been the main driving factors behind the success of our diverse projects.

2.1 SAMRUDDHI

We are working in Maharashtra in partnership with John Deere Foundation and Global Communities since last year where we are implementing Samruddhi project in three villages of Shirur block, Pune district. The project aims to help village communities by meaningfully improving their children’s education, living environment and income.

The program objectives are: 1. Improve community infrastructure 2. Increase quality of food, life & security 3. Improve educational quality and facilities 4. Increase youth vocational skills and employability

The Samruddhi project has been designed as a long term comprehensive integrated development programme. The project has a three tier structure where Cohesion Foundation Trust is an implementing agency working at grassroots, Centre for Advance Research and Development is a monitoring agency and John Deere India is the donor agency. The project is being implemented in six villages of Shirur and Haveli Blocks of Pune district of Maharashtra and these locations are also corporate project sites of John Deere. The project has many components of social development including Education, Women empowerment, Youth and employability but it is worth mentioning here that we have been able to achieve milestones of success in Agricuture, Livestock and Rural infrastructure development too. These efforts have received appreciation from all stakeholders including community, funding agency and the monitoring agency.

The project identified community infrastructure improvement works in water, sanitation, and education and recreation facilities improvement; and prioritized activities with the community to make sure that the project benefits goes to those who need it the most. Agriculture has been the mainstay of the target communities and with a little help they can dramatically increase their quality of food, incomes and food security. Activities were carried out to address three key areas: improving agricultural practices, improving access to extension and micro credit services, promoting agriculture allied activities. Farmers’ groups have been promoted through the project to facilitate dialogue, training and dissemination towards improved farming system practices and adopt sustainable farming practices. Besides farmers were trained for various agriculture allied activities like Dairy and income generation activities based on goat rearing and poultry were started for women who are poor or widow. In education quality of existing system for children and adult learning was improved by targeting Anganwadis, primary and secondary schools, vocational training centers and self-help groups (SHG). Tuition classes and reading skill improvement program are carried out for the children in the middle and high schools. To make education more affordable for girls, scholarships have also been awarded to girls who demonstrate academic merit and economic need that can be applied to costs such as school fees,

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uniforms and supplies. Over the course of the program, students are also supported in attending school through scholarships. Children in the age group of 3-6 years are supported through early child care centers.

Various activities undertaken this year are as follow

Activities Number of events

Girls Boys Total

Technical training on drawing 4 60 55 115

Indoor and outdoor competition

15 1277 1226 2503

Children exposure visit 1 22 20 42

Youth Meeting 5 32 68 100

The project beneficiaries were small land holders and single women who are landless and poor. Besides project also included Aanganwadis and Schools which are remote in location and have poor infrastructure. The beneficiaries were selected through Participatory Rural appraisal, Focused group discussion, field visits and village baseline survey. It was ensured that all the vulnerable families, men and women get covered under one or the other intervention. Duplication in terms of same person or family receiving benefits twice was avoided. The community mobilization done at the beginning of the project helped to ensure that the beneficiaries contribute towards the activities in different possible ways. For eg. the toilets have been constructed with 12% contribution from the families, 29% was leveraged through government scheme and rest was contributed by John Deere. The contribution made by the families help to develop a sense of ownership to the asset being created.

Sr.no Activity No of units completed

1 Individual toilet construction with 35 toilets by the convergence of govt. schemes

56

2 Soak-pit construction 95 pits

3 Community park 1 parks 4 Aanganwadi landscaping to make the AWC more child

friendly 7 Anganwadi

5 Model school 2 schools

6 Farmers group formation 9 groups

Demo plots to inculcate new technology like drip and mulching on the farm.

29 plots

7 Exposure visits and trainings of the farmers on different cropping patterns and soil health

36 no.

8 Improved housing system 21 families

9 Backyard poultry, Goat distribution for income generation for poor and widow women

30 beneficiaries

10 Vaccination for preventive measure against FMD and worms

4725 cattle

11 Artificial insemination 354 cattle

12 Sponsorship to the poor students to support their education

94 students

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13 Mentoring adolescent girls to impart health awareness, leadership skills and improve parent-child relationship.

190 girls

14 Computer literacy program 270 students

15 Revolving fund support to SHG women to start or expand the Small and medium enterprise

14 SHG

Impact

Community especially farmers have become more aware about new technologies and scientific techniques of farming. One of the evidence for the same is adoption of soil and water testing. Farmers are now adopting more preventive measures in farming such as spraying neem oil on the crop and in livestock rearing by doing vaccinating the cattle. Ownership of the assets created has been observed as people have been maintaining these assets on their own. There is a change in the mindset of the people as earlier they perceived NGO work as a give and take relationship and now they see NGOs and the community as partners in development process. Major impact has been observed through development of community infrastructure such as Model school and Anganwadi. There is a positive change in the overall environment of the school as learning has improved through support classes. The Anganwadis have been renovated in such a way that the children find it attractive and playful. There has been an increase in the number of children registering in Anganwadis. Also the duration of time kids were spending in these facilities earlier has increased. Graphic painting and child friendly TLMs are the main source of attraction for children.

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Section 3 WOMEN EMPOWERMENT

3.1 RIGHTS TO PRODUCTIVE RESOURCES

Villages with the highest incidence of acute poverty also have the highest ratios of gender inequality. Development experience throughout the world tells us that reducing the former will require reducing the latter. Investing in women and girls is the most effective strategy for overall human development progress—and an integral component of Cohesion's programmes.

Cohesion has been working in recent years to increase women’s participation in decision making, ownership and control of productive resources, involvement in PRIs and awareness on gender inequalities and how to address them and many other issues that have been forte for men until recently.

Cohesion is trying to address the gendered aspects of agriculture and enable women to get recognition as a women farmer. Cohesion agrees with the definition of farmer given by National Agriculture Policy.

“ Farmer” will refer to a person actively engaged in the economic and/or livelihood activity of growing crops and producing other primary agricultural commodities and will include all agricultural operational holders, cultivators, agricultural labourers, sharecroppers, tenants, poultry, and livestock rearers, fishers, beekeepers, gardeners, pastoralists, no corporate planters and planting labourers, as well as persons engaged in various farming related occupations such as sericulture, vermiculture, and agro-forestry.”

Therefore our efforts are targeted towards ensuring recognition of women from wider population and especially tribal women as farmers, who are deprived of their rights.

INCLUSIVE DEVELOPMENT OF TRIBAL WOMEN FARMERS IN NAVSARI DISTRICT

To ensure that the women farmers have control over the productive resources – land, water use, farm equipment, the NTFPs they collect etc. we have been working in Chikhli and Bansda Tribal Blocks of Navsari District, Gujarat (Majority being Primitive Tribe Groups) with ActionAid. The project is titled “Towards Ensuring Access to Productive Resources for Marginalized Women

Farmers” and it started in since 2012 in 10 villages of Chikhli Block.

We are working towards inclusive development of women and men farmers, youths and children. The programme follows rights based approach, striving for holistic development through following three core activities:

1. Groups formation of 2500 women farmers to establish their identity and rights as farmer

and increase their access to information, infrastructure, entitlements and rights. 85

women farmers’ Sangathans are spread across 50 villages and 90% of the women are

tribal. A block level federation of these 2500 women farmers named “Ujaas Mahila

Khedut Sangathan” is formed.

2. The organization is having a very deep experience for over 3 years of holistic development

of more than 1000 men farmers from tribal communities with orchard establishment as

the core element, locally known as Wadi development with the support from NABARD.

“Wadi” is a Gujarati word that means small orchard which is actually a tree-based farming

system that consists of fruit tree suitable to the area or a combination of trees with

forestry species. Two or more tree crops are selected in Wadi model to minimise

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biological and marketing risks. District with more than 1500 women farmers in the form

of SHGs. Under this, various activities related to water resources development, women

empowerment, health and agriculture are undertaken covering 10 villages around Dhama

Dhuma. The central focus of Wadi has been able to act as a sustainable and replicable

model for poverty alleviation. The Wadi together with suitable soil conservation, water

resource development and other measures is aimed at improving the quality of tribal life

by creating employment and livelihood opportunities at all levels.

3. In 11 villages we have mobilized tribal youth to form a group called Ayus (Adivasi Yuva

Sangathan). With a membership of 10 to 20 youths per group, presently more than 200

girls and boys are members of these groups. Through these groups we are generating

awareness amongst youth to connect them to the tribal culture and the rights &

entitlements given to them by the government. Besides we have regular monthly

meetings where we discuss issues related to development, gender, education,

government schemes and many other social issues. Further 22 Children Parliament have

been formed involving youth and children to make them aware of their rights as a child

and a tribal and demand for public services

Why this initiative?

The three blocks where Cohesion is working in Navsari district, though have good presence of natural resources but still they remain excluded from the government development programmes. This area is tribal dominant and the community has remained secluded from the main stream development processes. There is a complete unawareness of government programmes/projects/schemes and their own rights. Lack of awareness on development programmes has led to a situation where the people have accepted the situation to be normal. There is no positive pressure group to address the issues or negotiate with the service providers and representative of the local governance body on the behalf of the people to provide what is entitled to them.

Uniqueness of the initiative

All these issues had one common underlying problem which was lack of awareness regarding basic rights which resulted in acceptance of the situation the way it is. It was with this background that Cohesion decided to undertake a comprehensive approach to enable the communities to demand for their rights by empowering them through multiple projects targeting women, youth and children separately thus making them the catalysts for their own development. The three components of our project are interlinked to each other in such a way that there is a ripple effect of each positive outcome. The Federation of women formed under this project is the only Institution of Tribal Women Farmers in the region. With this uniqueness, it has created identity at Block level as well district level. Working with women helped in bridging the gender disparities existing in the tribal culture. Involving youth in our activities has been a great success as they are acting as change agents for many activities and their support for this overall programme is laudable. The involvement of children has been very useful as they are fast learners and the awareness created in them regarding rights goes a long way and becomes a lifelong lesson, thus creating a long-term impact

Presently the Federation has developed a vision of its own. The women are in the process of five years planning for the future of the Federation.

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Impact

• New techniques adopted for climate change practices.

• Promotion of ecology friendly farming and Non-pesticides management based agriculture

• Women farmers organized themselves in groups and established linkages with different

government schemes like Mission Mangalam (Gujarat Livelihood Promotion Company),

NABARD, Samaj Suraksha Department, Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Sardar Smruti Kendra, Tribal

area Sub Plan, Forest Department and many others.

• Women have started to develop forward linkages and are now doing marketing of their

products also at local level.

• Federation initiated concept of Khedut Diary (Farmer’s Diary) used to record their

agricultural inputs and outputs

• Awareness on Gender equality in land ownership has increased as federation has been

linked to WGWLO network (Working Group of Women and Land Ownership (WGWLO) is

a network of 41 Civil society organizations (CSOs) working to enhance agriculture land

ownership and access to productive resources for women farmers. Cohesion represents

itself in the steering committee of the network in Gujarat.)

• Federation has been instrumental in promoting sustainable agriculture practices by

reviving traditional practices such as preservation of old variety of seeds.

• The women groups are also involved in social issues like domestic violence, Alcoholism

etc.

• Collective farming approach adopted by women – helps in saving time, energy and money

• Combination of Rights based approach as well as Developmental approach adopted by

federation

• Federation going to do 5-year visioning exercise in coming future in consultation with

different stakeholders

• Women have been able to place themselves as progressive farmers at par with men and

they take pride in that.

Achievements

Seeing the ongoing work of the federation many potential partnerships have been developed such as:

• Increased Partnership with NABARD TDF (WADI Programme), with GIZ for NPM (Non-

Pesticides Management), Mango Marketing and production of Bio Pesticides and Bio

fertilizers, with Action Aid for rights of women as farmers and their rights on forests as

well as tribal governance (PESA)

• Geographical expansion taking place in the blocks of Chikhli, Khergam and Bansda. The

model of Collective farming recognized by Block Development Officer and will be

replicated in other villages.

• Women members of federation invited to join hands with Government’s Total Sanitation

Campaign and MGNREGA smooth implementation.

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• Tie ups with line departments of Government like Tribal Sub Plan, Mission Mangalam,

DRDA, ICDS, and PDS etc.

• The federation is planning to develop women farmer extensionists for agriculture.

Sustainability

• The initiative focuses for the tribal development with a special focus on women farmers

as well as their children especially girl child. The women who are sensitized on gender

roles are more likely to educate their children regarding the same thus carrying forward

the project message beyond the direct beneficiaries.

• Through this project we have developed linkages with many government departments

and other organizations working on developmental as well as rights based issues in the

district. This will ensure that the communities while participating in any developmental

project will not always be at the receiving end but will participate as stakeholders in the

overall project. Some of them are as follow:

• Tribal area sub plan

• Forest Department

• Mission Mangalam

• Krishi Vigyan Kendra and Navsari Agriculture University

• District Child Protection Unit

• NABARD

• NGOs like BAIF, Adivasi Ekta Parishad

• Committee leadership and the committee of 15 strong leaders meet regularly on 22nd of

every month for planning and monitoring. The leadership is on rotation every 3 years.

• The federation has developed its own vision values and mission. It has initiated its

activities and is also in process to get registered as a legal entity for institutionalizing,

sustaining and scaling up its operations.

• A cadre of leadership being developed in federation through structured efforts.

• Celebrations of International Women’s Day (first time in the block) as a gesture of

solidarity

Rights asserted and Toilets made, A case of self-empowerment through group strength in Chimanpada village

“Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan” is a government scheme with an objective of improvement in general quality of life in rural areas by accelerating sanitation coverage. The residents of Chimanpada village located in Chikhli block of Navsari district were facing lot of problems in getting the benefits of scheme for toilet construction at household level. The community had already invested their contribution for toilet construction and were facing lot of problems in getting the money from the government. So the women farmers of “Ujaas Mahila Khedut Sangathan” called a meeting with the Sarpanch and started following up the government line departments to process the applications. They demanded for their rights under the scheme and took the issue to the block

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level officers. Cohesion team supported the women groups and accompanied them to the block office where they presented their issue and demanded for the money. After this strong movement of women farmers, the block level officials deposited the money in women’s account and transferred the entire pending amount.

Now there are toilets in the village and women are very happy as they don’t have to go outside. Led by example, other women members have also started construction of toilets.

International Women’s day celebration

Cohesion Foundation Trust along with 22 women farmers of Ujaas Mahila Khedut Sangathan went to Navsari Krushi University on 8th March 2015. This event was planned with support from Navsari Krushi University to by inviting leader women farmers of Ujaas to University

Ujaas Mahila Khedut Sangathan also celebrated Women’s Day on 17th March in Panikhadak village of Chikhli Block with participation of 250 women. The event was attended by representatives from Cohesion, ActionAid and Agriculture University of Navsari.

Ambaben Vadhu a women farmer of 37 years old lives in Toranvera village of Chikhli block, Navsari. Her family includes two sons, who are less than eighteen years of age and her husband Amrutbhai Vadhu (44) who is a daily wage agriculture labourer. Mother of Amrutbhai who is 73 years old, also lives with the family. They have very small piece of land near by their house. As the village is situated in hilly terrain water for agriculture is always a concern. The only crop she cultivates is paddy that too is dependent on the rains. As her land holding is very small and resources are limited she is not able to practice multiple cropping. The other source of livelihood within the villagewas not there and she was unaware of work that can be demanded under MGNREGA. The awareness of MGNREGA in this village is very poor and as a result the Job Cards were not in the possession of the holders but with the Sarpanch. Sarpanch used to mark the attendance of the workers in the muster roll while actual work

was done by the machine.

As a member of women group made by Cohesion, Ambaben received trainings on the rights of employment under MGNREGA. As a result she decided to take collective action through the group for demanding their job cards back and give them 100 days work in the village. Seeing this, women farmers of neighboring four villages also demanded for their Job Cards from the sarpanch.

“I don’t know much about the NREGA Act but one thing I definitely know now. My Job Card should be in my hand and I should get minimum hundred days of work.” says Ambaben(32) of Toranvera village.

“We were not aware of our right to work. We didn’t know that Government has a special act called MGNREGA which provides us 100 days livelihood per family. But after Cohesion started working here, we got aware of the MGNREGA Act and started demanding for the work” says Rikaben (30) of Panikhadak village, Navsari District.

Ambaben showing her Job Card

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“We want to bring this awareness to others in the community regarding this employment act and improve our lives by accessing our Rights” says Sumitraben (33) of Panikhadak village, Navsari District.

Ambaben and Sumitraben are members of Ujaas Mahila Khedut Sangathan. They never used to consider themselves as farmers even thought they were working on their land. But now after joining the project they have realised that as 80% of the work in field is done by women so they also have right to be recognised as farmers. The women are taking care of their field in the photo. They have very less land but still they try to maintain and grow crops like vegetables, paddy in the field.

3.2 SWABHOOMI KENDRA FOR IMPROVING LEGAL ACCESS AND OWNERSHIP TO PRODUCTIVE RESOURCES

A new institutional mechanism - Swabhoomi Kendras helps to provide Land literacy and access to productive resources for women farmers through trained paralegal workers. With the help of UNDP, 15 Block level centers were set up in 12 districts since January 2014 by member organizations of Working Group for Women’s Land Ownership and it is still going on.

Ambaben and Sumitraben working in their farm

Women showing their Job Cards

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Cohesion being an active partner/member of WGWLO has set up such a centre at VARAHI block In Patan District in the office of the Mamlatadar. The paralegal worker sits there for two days a week and pays visits to the family and local Panchayat if needed. The main role of the worker is to provide on spot guidance and family level support to see that the woman's name is enrolled as a partner in the land. The land ownership provides social status and bargaining power and increased access to credit.

The Kendra also acts as an information hub and maintains a record of the support provided to each visitor. Our ongoing program of MKSP for empowerment of women farmers gave us a ready platform to maximize the outreach of Swabhoomi Kendras. A detailed strategic conversion plan was prepared. Support and guidance was provided to more than 3500 women. The program has especially reached the single and widow farmers who had no claim on the land and other resources within their social structure, but now they have secured land titles. This programme has been very challenging as it questions the whole patriarchy prevalent in the communities and women have always been excluded from claiming rights to the sources of power and control.

3.3 PROMOTING LIVELIHOOD SECURITY AMONG WOMEN FARMERS

Mahila Kisan Sashaktikaran Pariyojana (MKSP) project began in 2013 and is in the second year of its implementation. The programme focuses on food security of the targeted women farmers and to enhance their household level income and promote strong, vibrant community based institutions for improving their collective bargaining power vis-à-vis the Government and the market forces.

Objective was to empower 10000 women for their recognition as women farmers in semi-arid and fragile regions of Kutch and Patan districts of Gujarat.

Under the project host of activities are being implemented such as WFPG trainings, CRP trainings, soil health improvement, seed treatment, seed production and seed preservation, promoting organic cultivation, creating a cadre of local community service providers, promotion and strengthening of SHGs and FPOs of women farmers, capacity building of women farmers etc.

The programme also focuses on women empowerment for Institution building and management, Technological skill up gradation to enhance organically crop production, collective way of input and output marketing. This would be done through various training programs, exposure visits, interactive workshops etc.

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The project therefore makes serious endeavors to reduce drudgery of women farmers so that they have time and resources for participating in mainstream decision making related to agriculture operation at household, villages, cluster and block levels. The project is positively based towards single women headed households and women with disabilities. Here we have proposed to cover 3960, women farmers from Rapar taluka and 2592, women farmers from Bhachau taluka which is total 6552, women farmers will be covered from Kutch district and 3448, women farmers will be covered from Santalpur taluka of Patan district.

This year we completed the baseline of all 10000 Mahila Kisan (women farmer). we have formed all the 500 groups in all the three taluka Rapar, Bhachau and Santalpur. While formation we faced many problems like most of the groups were inactive or absent during the meetings, but with effective mobilization skills we managed to form and regularize Women Farmer Producer Groups (WFPGs).

We have developed training modules on “CRP-orientation” and “WFPG Capacity building” for formalizing the training and maintain the pattern of the training.

This year we did capacity building for 246 WFPGs and also six WFPG Leadership trainings. We also identified 195 CRPs in Rapar, Bhachau and Santalpur.

We have provided one CRP orientation training to all the CRPs in the first year with required IEC materials like Bag, Reading materials and Notepad.

We conducted soil testing for all the 10% of the total Mahila Kisan.

In order to create best practice of documenting the input supplied and output measured, we have provided Farmer Diary to all the CRPs and one

member in the WFPG Groups. In total we distributed 500 Farmer Diaries.

We have also given WFPG register to have the details of intervention done during the whole project period and measuring the impact. One register is given to each of the WFPG groups where all the details of the project intervention will be entered.

In order to have good awareness and develop skills we have started exposure visits of the Mahila Kisan. Till date we have conducted 5 exposure visits to different places.

Soil Testing

WFPG Training

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Section 4 SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE AND LIVELIHOODS

The Millennium Development Goals begin with a commitment to eradicate hunger and poverty. As the producers of food, farmers’ role in hunger eradication is obvious, but farmers also represent one-third of the world’s population and one-half of its poor, while the majority of small-holder farmers are women. Investing in small-holder agriculture is essential to reducing hunger and poverty, underpinning success with all the MDGs, including those regarding health, well being

and gender inequality. “A necessary component of meeting the MDGs by 2015 in many parts of the world is a more productive, profitable and sustainable agricultural sector. For most of the rural poor, who constitute a large proportion of the developing world’s population, agriculture is critical to attaining the MDGs."1

Aligning ourselves with the MDG we have taken various strategic projects to promote sustainable

agricultural practices gradually convincing the agricultural communities to adopt better practices.

4.1 WADI

Wadi is one such project which begun in South Gujarat since 2010 and aims at promoting

livelihoods of marginal farmers. It is a seven-year project which started with support from

NABARD located in Bansda, Chikhli and Khergam talukas of Navsari district. More than 98% of the

population is ST in the cluster. The cluster is primarily occupied by people from different castes

like; Dhodia, Kukna, Koncha, Nayka, Varni, Harijan, Mahal, Hadpati, Ahir, Rajput, Pandit and

Muslim.

The project is in its fifth year and we have covered more than 500 farmers so far. Farmers were

supported to develop their Wadis based on horticultural crops like Mango and Sapota which are

best suited to the local conditions. During this year we helped farmers in maintaining the Wadis

that they made by providing them training and exposure to keep in touch with the development

in farming practices. Agricultural Inputs like Fertiliser and Bio-pesticides were also distributed to

apply in the Wadi.

Fertiliser Distribution 418 farmers

Fertiliser Application & Spraying of PP – Chemicals (Geru – Chuna) 478 farmers

Group Well 1 no.

New SHG Formation women 6 no.

Training to PIA Staff 2

Women Farmer Training cum Exposure visits 3

Bio-Pesticide distribution 414 farmers

Workshop on FPO Development 2

Workshop on FPO Development 2

PM Jandhan Yojana camp 1

1 Cited from UN Interactive Hearings on the MDGs in June 2010

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Vermin compost training 60 participants

The project was received very well by the farmers and

during this year we started a second project of Wadi

Tribal Development Fund with support from NABARD to

cover 1000 more farmers. The selection criteria for the

farmers is to identify 400 having land holding size 2.5 to

5 acres category. Remaining 600 farmers have to be

identified from the land holding size 1 to 2.5 acres.

Moreover, farmers having holding size more than 5

acres have not been covered considering them

relatively big farmers. Whereas, farmers, having farm

size 0.5 to 1.0 acre were also excluded as they need to

grow their staple food crops for retaining minimum

level of food security and livelihood. This year we have

selected 200 farmers based on this criterion. Cultivation

of horticultural crops being a labour intensive industry,

this project is also providing gainful employment to the

others who are not directly benefited under the project.

Also, it has helped reducing distress migration on

account of no source of income within the village.

The crop bearing commences from fifth year. As such inter cropping like vegetables may be taken up in the first four years of the project to make it viable. In high density plantation, the production increases from 4 tonnes/acre in the fifth year to 6 tonnes/acre in the seventh year. Thereafter, the yield stabilizes at 8 tonnes/acre from eighth to fifteenth year.

Wadi 2 organic

Activities undertaken No. of farmers

Wadi and Mandap Development

Identification and Selection 200

Intercropping adopted 100

Mandap developed 200

Soil and Water Conservation

Land Leveling 16

Construction of trench for land development 34

Water resources development

Water Lifting Device (Mobile Engine) and water transmission device

4 and 19 respectively

Drip Irrigation System was installed 45

Other Activity

Development of low cost vermin-compost bed 197

Tool Kit Distribution 200

Vermi Compost Training in progress

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Kitchen Garden Development in Backyard 80

Ratilal Dalubhai and his wife from Ankalacha village in their Wadi and Mandap

Ratilalbhai is a hard-working farmer of Ankalacha. He lives in a small house with family

of six members. He used to work as a Textile mill laborer until his father passed away after which he returned to his village to look after his family. In his village he has a cow and two acres of land. In June 2014 he joined the Wadi project by including one acre of his land. It was a big decision for him as half of his land was going to be under a project which he had some apprehensions in the beginning. He made Wadi in ¾ acre and mandap in ¼ acre. But his patience and hard work paid and now he gets an income of Rs 5000 from Ivy Gourd and Rs 4500 from Turmeric. His monthly income from Mandap is between Rs 4500 to Rs 5000. In Wadi he has planted craft of various fruits. He has planted mango, chikoo and guava. All these grafts and mandap material were given by CFT with support from NABARD. As his house is close to the mandap and wadi, he gives more attention to ensure that the plants get timely fertilizer and water. He uses the borewell for water supply.

Ratilal has been very active in all the trainings and exposure visits that were organized to bring clarity in better practices for making wadi and mandap more successful. He uses the income from farming for meeting the household expenses and reinvesting in his farm

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Community awareness ,training , exposure visits Total

Farmer Training, Material demonstration and Awareness Camp. 18

Farmer Exposure visit within state 10

Capacity building and support for skill development training (VDC, Cluster committee, Producer Organisation)

2

Training and Exposure visit for PIA Staff 4

Staff Workshop 3

Awareness programme on SHG 4 Income generation and skill development training for local production of organic inputs and marketing

1

Health camps for villagers 3

Awareness camp on women health 2

Kitchen Garden Development in Backyard 80

4.1.1 Swachh Bharat Abhiyan-Awareness Campaigns

The Swachh Bharat Mission is a campaign by Government India to keep the cities, towns and villages of India clean and to accelerate the efforts to achieve universal sanitation coverage and to put focus on sanitation. Cohesion conducted mass awareness campaigns each in Panikhadak, Rumla and Toranvera villages of Chikhli Block of Navasari District. These campaigns were supported by NABARD and in total we mobilized 1500 number of people including farmer beneficiaries of Wadi programme, School Teachers, students from grade V to grade VIII, SHG members and other local farmers. The main objective of these campaigns was

• Creating awareness on importance of sanitation.

• Creating awareness on saving water and reducing wastage

• awareness generation and health education to create a felt need for personal, household and environmental hygiene

• Elimination of open defecation

• Eradication of manual scavenging

• Solid waste management

• A behavioral change in people regarding healthy sanitation practices

Swachh Bharat Campaign in Toranvera village

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4.2 PROMOTION OF SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE THROUGH NO PESTICIDE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES

GIZ with Sustainable Agriculture Network Gujarat (SANG) has identified COHESION as one of the implementing partners to initiate a pilot project with technical support of Safe Harvest Private Ltd. Total 1200 farmers will be brought under the training and awareness activities out of which 450 farmers will be treated thoroughly under NPM protocol and standards.

The main goal of this project is promotion of sustainable agriculture through no-pesticides management practices through technical assistance of safe harvest Another objective of this project is to arranged training and awareness programme to promote sustainable agriculture including pre-harvesting and post-harvesting trainings, soil treatment training and at last, but not least, training on formation of primary producer company.

1 Identification of NPM supervisor for overall project implementation

2 Area Identification and enrolment of farmers

3 Compilation of information of selected farmers in SHPL format

4 Formation Village/faliya NPM group

5 Identification and selection of Bhumi Rakshak ;‘BR’ (Extension Volunteer from each village)

6 Coordination for the ToT & Planning meeting of BRs

7 Identification of farmer entrepreneurs for production of Bio pesticides and bio fertilizer

8 Creating database of farmers

9 Crop specific Pre-harvesting training of farmers for promotion of NPMi for each group

10 On farm visit of plot with farm owner

11 Monthly review meeting

12 Crop specific Post harvesting training of farmers

13 Workshop on Soil fertility improvement

14 Workshop on farmer producer company

Cohesion attended a ToT on NPM and its components in July 2014 initially, conducted by SHPL. After the training, an orientation and planning meeting cum field visit was planned. Based on the learning from the training we started the work in our field area. Cohesion selected 666 farmers from Chikhli and Bansda blocks of Navsari district. As the area has a great potential for mango crop we gave trainings specifically for NPM Mango for the next year harvest. The farmers were also made aware of how they can place their products more competitively in the market.

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Section 5 TRAININGS AND EVALUATIONS

We believe and sharing our learning. From time to time Cohesion gets involved in conducting various training and evaluations for other organizations and institutions.

5.1 DEVELOPING UNDERSTANDING ON PRA CONCEPT AND TOOLS-ENTREPRENEURSHIP DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE (EDI)

EDI requested Cohesion to conduct training program for the students of EDI since they were going for field placement for longer duration of four weeks. As Cohesion is involved in Rural development programs in the Santalpur block of Patan –Varahi field office was selected as Learning Centre. The training had two components

• Filed level Exercise by conducting PRA exercise using Resource Mapping, Transect Walk

and Social Mapping

• Class room sharing through lectures, Group Discussions, Films and PowerPoint

presentations

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Section 6 NETWORKING AND ADVOCACY

CFT has strong linkages and networking with state and National level institutions. It is an active member of Network of Wasteland Development, Water, Governance by Women, Women and Land Rights, Violence against Women, Natural Resource Management and Disaster Management etc. It is also in the steering committee of some of such networks. It has been working in partnership with different regional, national and international organizations like Kutch Nav Nirman Abhiyan, Unnati, Aga Khan Foundation, FWWB, Development Support Centre, Catalyst Management Services, EDI (I), BP Energy, NABARD, TATA Chemicals, Ambuja Cement Foundation, PEM Consulate Denmark, Development Associates Denmark GFA Germany etc.

The Organization currently has been participating in campaigns related to Land Rights for Women &Tribal Community, Rights of Migrant Communities such as salt workers, forest rights, RTI, right to education etc.

Cohesion was selected a LEAD AREA RESOURCE AGENCY (LARA) in Chhattisgarh by SFAC. Cohesion also works as a consortium along with AKRSP (I), DSC, GIDR and applies for different projects. Cohesion is active member of Working Group of Women and Land Ownership (WGWLO) and Farmer’s network called ‘Sajjata Sangh’. Cohesion is also part of water network ‘Pravah’ and national level network Wada na Todo Abhiyan. It is also part of Kutch Nav Nirman Abhiyan, and Namac.

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Section 7 SUPPORT, RESEARCH AND ADVOCACY ROLES-AN OVERVIEW

For support functions Cohesion works in other states besides Gujarat such as Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Orrisa, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand, Bihar and Jharkhand.

COHESION has rich and in-depth experience of project management, support and implementation. It has been covering sectors like, Livelihood security (livelihood promotion), Education, Health (especially Reproductive & Sexual Health), Natural Resource Development, Child Right Issues and other facets of Rural Development and Urban Poverty Alleviation and Infrastructure Development.

7.1 SUPPORT TO MGNREGA FOR BETTER IMPLEMENTATION

Cohesion Foundation Trust was selected as CSO for Patan block of Patan District. A common frame work for operation was developed for 139 villages of the block to be supported for the duration of nine months.

We undertook following activities to provide support

• Undertake IEC activities for awareness building, mobilization, and support for capacity building of wage seekers and creating an interface between implementation structure and wage seekers so that they are able to secure their rights, demand for work and payment for work in time

• Support for training and sensitization works for block and sub block level staff

• Function as implementation support teams for GP at cluster level a specially to avoid delay in wage payments

• Undertake action research to understand the reasons for low demand works

CFT team visited the villages and organized focused discussion with Sarpanch, Talati, Selected Job card holders, Representative of SHG leaders, Gram Sevak including other stakeholders and conducted RRA to find out the field situation. As a result of our intervention we covered 2500 people from 139 villages. 1382 Job Cards were issued in 27 villages. 210 Job Card Holders demanded for work from nine villages.

7.2 INTENSIVE PARTICIPATORY PLANNING EXERCISE (IPPE) FOR STATE INSTITUTE FOR RURAL DEVELOPMENT

Cohesion was engaged by State Institute for Rural Development for Intensive participatory planning exercise as a CSO for conducting five IPPE training exercises in Sami and Santalpur Blocks of Patan district.

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Section 8 PROJECT MANAGEMENT AND GOVERNANCE

CFT has an experience of strong management skill. As soon as the project is starts to be implemented, different kind of monitoring mechanisms are used to do strong management of the work.

There are platforms of monthly review meetings and MIS formats for reporting. At the Head office level there is PIU (Planning Implementation Unit) meeting every month where the Area Managers present the monthly progress of work. In that meeting support to be given from senior programme staff is also decided.

CFT has its own organizational strategy which is taken as a base. It also has its HR manual for systemizing the human resources. The HR Manual was revised 2012-13. There are new developments in the sectors and accordingly the HR Policy of Cohesion was revised.

Presently the organization is having 73 permanent and contract based professional staff.

Specific committees are established in the organization such as:

1. Anti-Sexual Harassment Committee (Ash committee) 2. Child Protection Committee (Child Protection Policy)

These committees look after the Sexual Harassment issues and Child protection as major focus of Cohesion’s work is with Children and Women.

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Section 9 AWARDS RECEIVED

Name of the award Name of the organization awarding/ facilitating

Award brief Year of Award

Sitaram Rao Livelihoods India Competition

Livelihoods Asia Summit, ACCESS Development Services

The Case Study Competition is organized annually around a specific theme, under which entries are solicited, assessed and the 10 best case studies are brought together into a Case Study Compendium that is released at the Livelihoods Asia Summit.

2014

The E-NGO Challenge South Asia (Best NGO practices using ICTs and Finalist)

Public Interest Registry (PIR) and Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF).

The eNGO Challenge aspires to create an ecosystem by recognizing and honoring NGOs which are using Information Communication Technology (ICT) and digital media tools for good governance and practices that are benefiting societies and communities at large.

2014

Beti Zindabad (Trophy for appreciation)

ActionAid India

To appreciate the efforts of organizations trying to make gender equality a lived reality in our daily lives

2014

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Section 10 AUDIT REPORT

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4–1

5

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