Social Mobilisation

RSPs, through their decades of work, have learnt and demonstrated that community owned organisations are financially and socially viable initiatives that can play a pivotal role in the process of social transformation. As part of the PPRP, Community Organisations (COs), Village Organisations (VOs) and Local Support Organisations (LSOs) will be formed to create local level governance bodies owned and operated by the people. These organisations are expected to play an important role in identifying problems and offering solutions, with the help of the government and other development stakeholders.

Social mobilisation is a process in which community members, especially the poor, form their own community organisations (COs) based on common interests and needs. Effective social mobilisation goes beyond forming Village Organisations (VOs) and involves a long-term process of building the institutions of the poor.

The concept is to build capacities of people to organise, manage their own organisations, and increase the outreach of government and other development actors for effective supply and genuine demand. SRSO provide social guidance as well as technical and financial assistance to the rural poor based on a standard three-tiered social mobilisation approach to Community Driven Development (CDD). The social mobilisation approach, centres on the belief that people including poor and women have an innate potential to help themselves, that they can better manage their limited resources if they organise themselves into their own institutions.

After achieving 40% coverage in a Union Councils, the VOs are provided support to establish a Union Council based Local Support Organization. During this process, two representatives from each VO form the general body of an LSO. The General Body then elects the Executive Body of the LSOs. The LSOs placed at the Union Council level play very affective role in accessing resources for the community at the local level and implementing small scale projects.

Community Organizations, Village Organisations and Local Support Organiztions identify and undertake a vast array of development activities, e.g., community infrastructure, education, health, micro-credit, skills training, wildlife preservation and common resource management, amongst others.

The PPRP is building upon this three-tiered social mobilisation approach of RSPs, which includes:

•    Fostering of Community Organisations (COs) at neighbourhood or muhalla level.
•    Federating COs into Village Organisations (VOs) at village level.
•    Federating VOs into Local Support Organisations (LSOs) at Union Council (UC) level.