In April 2007, Seva Mandir was awarded a contract to perform as the Lead/Nodal NGO for Council for Advancement of People’s Action and Rural Technology (CAPART) to assist with the implementation of its programs in the three districts of Udaipur, Rajsamand and Sirohi in the state of Rajasthan. This gave Seva Mandir a potential to reach out to nearly 150,000 households within the selected area.

The Nodal NGO has the responsibility of providing implementation and monitoring support as well as program outreach for the CAPART programs, in addition to inviting proposals from regional non-profit organizations. A key advantage of the Nodal contract is the potential for developing and supporting a central platform where the regional NGOs can collaborate and share knowledge.

Within this context, Seva Mandir organized a day long workshop on 24 May 2007 to launch the program. The workshop was attended by representatives from 56 NGOs from the three target districts. The Collector of Udaipur district, Mr Shikhar Agarwal who was the Chief Guest formed an eminent panel along with Ms Neelima Khetan, Chief Executive of Seva Mandir and Ms Ratna Kumawat, a Senior Program Officer from CAPART.

The ensuing panel discussion helped set the tone for a productive dialogue on the possibilities of the programs offered by CAPART. A big strategy of the District Collector was to promote intensive work so that the impact could be felt in a region. For example, while building toilets, the effort should be to cover an entire panchayat instead of spreading the funding thin over a larger area.

Currently the CAPART sponsored programs available through the Lead NGO are:

• Roof top rain water harvesting (water conservation)

• Sanitation Awareness and innovative, practical sanitation models for rural areas

• Rural Young Professional Scheme (Skill and life skills training for rural youth)

• ICT - Village Resource center

• Life Skill Development and Income Generation

activities

• Primary food and vegetable processing for addressing malnutrition and income generation among the rural poor

The sessions, throughout a very engaging day, were structured to provide guidelines for each of the programs, as also the technical insights into details of implementation. During the last hour of the workshop the participants broke up into three smaller groups, according to the most popular areas of interest - Rural Young Professional, Rain Water Harvesting, and Rural Sanitation Schemes. Each of the groups was facilitated by the block level program co-coordinators to bring out program specific issues. The discussions led to a few interesting discoveries of the gap that exists between what looks good on paper versus the rural realities. For example, if only BPL families were to be the beneficiaries of Rain water harvesting program, a practical issue is that almost none of the BPL families would have a pucca house and hence a stable rooftop structure for collection of water! Similarly, as per requirement for Yuva Jyoti (youth skill enhancement program), the rural girls selected should have at least studied till standard VIII. This again would be a rarity among tribal population in these targeted districts.

The workshop was a starting point for launch of CAPART schemes available through Seva Mandir. Leading from the workshop, a clear set of issues emerged which were communicated to CAPART. The nodal platform did offer, the gathering of NGOs, an opportunity to share their learnings which has translated in the submission of proposals (as of Sep 2007) benefiting nearly 3000 households in the region.

For Seva Mandir the program is an opportunity to augment the outreach of Government schemes to the rural marginalised groups. Seva Mandir believes that it has supported the growth of an extensive social capital through a long term investment in formation of community groups. The ability of these groups to participate and demand from Government builds on their strength and hopefully builds linkages into future programs.