The Asal Chhimekee Nepal : Community Empowerment and Livelihood Programme, first identifies the communities with needs of empowerment. This is done by various researches that measure various socio-economic compositions such as:
Access to clean and safe drinking water
Access to basic standards of sanitation e.g.: toilets
Literacy Rate
Employment Rate
Economic status : housing conditions | income
Land ownership
Food Security
Communities with the most amount of needs are subjected to the list of proposals for group formation. Mostly, churches of the community are approached but in the areas where not applicable, the key persons are identified and contacted with for the initiation of the project.
Forming a group
An intensive need- identification research accompanied with a pilot survey is conducted and a group comprising of more than 10 members is formed with active involvement of the ACN staff. Encouragement and visions are shared with the pioneering members towards the potentials and challanges that are probable. A sense of assistance and security is provided but special care is given to highlighting the fact that the sovereignty, ownership and primary responsibility lies in the hands of the members.
Assisting the group
Community Empowerment and Livelihood Programme will assist the group by the following ways:
Formation of an executive body
Training the executive members in all their responsibilities as the post- bearers
Training on how to manage the authenticity and financial ownership of the body
Training on how to co- ordinate with the governmental departments for optimum utilization of the national benefits and maintaining financial documents as per the guidlines
Searching and adding general members
Saving on regular basis
Exploring the potentials in micro enterprise
Investing in the right micro enterprise and providing personal loans with proper regulations and interest rates
Management of popular conflicts that may arise
Sustaining the group
The final objective of the project is to make the groups self- sustaining so that ACN can be involved in formation of other new groups and the groups themselves can be capable of influencing the community. Surveys and focus group discussions are conducted at required intervals to monitor the changes that have come and if the groups are now capable of sustaining their own projects.
Developments Observed
Lots of time, we are amazed at the big changes in the community because of the combined effort that we put in small paces. Usually, health and sanitation transformations are observed in huge amounts. People who were not involved in any income generation activities involve themselves in amazingly profitable businesses like pig-rearing, improvised and cost-effective farming, etc. But the true and meaningful transformations are observed in some members who are not the primary income generators of the family but are involved in small businesses like candle- making and have amazingly hopeful future perspectives. Significant appearance of leadership development and public-addressing is seen in such shy communities, that the brightness of hope for the future dazzles the eyes which see desperate national economy as a hurdle in community development.
Please take some time to explore our stories to learn about various stories of transformation that have excited and encouraged us.