Strategy 2018-2022

1. Introduction: National Development Context:

Sustainable Development has been a global agenda for the last 25 years. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) declaration by the United Nations has set foundation for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030. The UN Conference on Sustainable Development held in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012, and UN General Assembly (UNGA) held in September 2014 prepared solid foundation for SDGs and finally agreed in the UNGA held in September 2015. Nepal, as a member of the UN, is committed to this global initiative.

Nepal has made significant progress in poverty reduction and human development in the last two decades. Still, absolute poverty at 21.6 percent is among the highest in South Asia; and the country is at the bottom of the countries with middle human development status. Nepal intends to be a middle income country by 2030.

Nepal is a young democracy and the youngest federal democratic republic. For the last three decades, the country is passing through a protracted political transition from Absolute Monarchy to Constitutional Monarchy with Multiparty Democracy, and further to Federal Democratic Republic. The Constitution of Nepal, promulgated by the second Constituent Assembly in September 2015 guarantees civil rights, sets three layered government structure of the state and guides development road map towards prosperity. As it took almost a decade to complete the constitutional transition process and to come up with new constitution, the provincial and local government level laws and institutions are just in the evolutionary process. The implementation of the federal structure of governance has started with the election of people’s representatives for the Local Governments (Village Council and Municipalities). This will enable us all to exercise the power and responsibility entrusted by the Constitution to the local governments and people. With the political struggle for people’s democracy being over, the challenge is now to meet the aspirations of Nepali people to develop and prosper. In this context, the country is striving towards inclusive and high economic growth with social justice and empowers citizens -both economically and socially. While the country’s development plans and programmers are geared towards this direction, the commitment to implement the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 15 years have reinforced the country’s drive to the path of prosperity. The initiatives to formulating long term visions and strategies for development at the government and political levels are indicative of the country’s focus towards this direction

While the decade long armed conflict during 1996-2006 had its genesis in poverty, inequality, disparity, and exclusion, the state restructuring process and implementation of fundamental rights of the citizens enshrined in Nepal’s Constitution 2015 intend to address all such grievances against state. Thus, as the orientation of the government has been to implement the Constitution to achieve the development aspirations, the adoption of 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development  and implementation of SDGs have been complementary to what the political process of the country is heading to. Nepal’s liberal political regime also provides congenial environment for Non-Government Organizations (NGOs)and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) for community mobilization and engaging in income generating activities. User Groups, particularly in natural resource management such as water and forest are also active in mobilizing community and local resources and have been instrumental to empower people.

Nepal faced two concurrent shocks amid constitutional making process in the recent years, first shock was the massive earthquakes of April and May 2015 which caused a huge loss of lives, property and physical infrastructure and the second shock was four month long trade blockade in the borders between India and Nepal starting September 2015 along with the promulgation of the Constitution. The 2015 earthquake and economic blockade further reduced the GDP growth rate to 3 percent in FY 2014/15 and to almost zero percent in 2015/16.There was a revival in the economic activities in FY 2016/17 with GDP estimated to grow by nearly 7 percent –mainly because of better agricultural output and low base effect. The challenge is to maintain this momentum.

Viewed from the regional, caste/ethnicity, gender and geographical perspectives, there is a large disparity.  Certain social groups and geographical areas are far behind the national average. As elsewhere in South Asia, poverty in Nepal is a gendered issue and the incidence of poverty falls disproportionately on women and girl. There is also acute social and spatial incidence of poverty. As Nepal carries a legacy of a hierarchical social structure based on gender, caste and ethnicity, poverty has a strong social dimension. Food self-sufficiency is much lower among socially excluded people where poverty is the highest. Similarly, they are far behind in education and health outcomes. This culminates into low human development record of such people. The unequal social and economic opportunities embedded into the hierarchical social structure have resulted in high income inequality in the country.

On the whole, Nepal’s human development outcome over the past decade shows an improvement accompanied by considerable gender, social, and geographical or regional inequalities, despite that the inequalities among regions have begun narrowing down.

1. Civil Society Environment in Nepal and Samjhauta Nepal

The work being done by Civil Society in Nepal is very much appreciated at all levels in uplifting the status of people and combating poverty. It complements with the strategy of Govt of Nepal and give it a reach to the remote places through simple mechanism of mobilizing local resources and handing over the ownership of development to them. Civil society have to face some beaurocratic challenges and there are some areas where civil also need to reflect on themselves, but in spite of all these challenges, civil society reaches poor, vulnerable and the most needy people of Nepal, work with them for them and mainstream them in the development process.

Strategy revision is a part of reflection on its work and plan further. Samjhauta Nepal, with its staff and the board members reflected on the previous strategy to develop the new from January 2018 to December 2022.

Samjhauta Nepal was registered as a national NGO on March 26, 2003 under Nepal Government NGO Registration Act 1977. Since then it has been engaged in building different interventions of Community Education and Empowerment through Literacy, Saving, Loan, Micro enterprises, Livelihood Improvement, Life Skills, Nutrition, Gender and Social Inclusion, Health and Sanitation, Sexual and Reproductive health, HIV/AIDS, Democracy and Governance, Peace building and Dispute resolution, Community Housing, Disaster Risk Reduction, Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) etc.

It has a comparative advantage based on its experiences of working with more than 200 local partners in more than 40 districts of different ecological zones of Nepal. 

Individually and collectively, Samjhauta Nepal has built credentials and reputation in providing women with skills necessary to improve their livelihoods and strengthen their organizations/groups and their voices in local government through participatory planning and action. It was born by strategic localization of Pact International.

1. Vision, Mission, Core values and Priorities of Samjhauta Nepal

Vision: A peaceful and equitable society for all.

Mission:  Create opportunity for women, men, adolescent, youth, children, marginalized groups and persons with disabilities to develop the skill and resource needed to achieve social, economic, political, civil and environmental justice

Goal: To empower community people specifically women in a way that they themselves take actions to become healthy, independent and self reliant and become the owner of development.

 

Objectives:

• Conduct research and hold workshops to contribute to innovations and best practices within the field of community empowerment/ development and build development on the strong foundation.
• Work closely with the communities in the villages, districts and mobilize/ engage   them to link with interventions of their need and sustain through action oriented literacy and savings led package.  
• An appreciative and participatory process empowering the community to realize their power, assess their needs, plan their actions utilizing their own power and local resources decreasing dependency as much as possible.
• Soliderate different people in the community and create a mass of diversified people and develop a process of respecting each other’s existence and power
• Raise the status of women, youth, children and their communities by promoting Self Help group, independence and equitable distribution of resources.
• Encourage and Advocate for gender equality and social inclusion and increased respect for women’s roles and responsibilities and their engagement in development mainstream.
• Advocating and lobbying against gender based violence, trafficking and other issues that affect women’s lives negatively.

Core values

• Education and empowerment
• Equal opportunities for all
• Respect human values
• Appreciative, inclusive approach

Priorities:

1. Education and empowerment of rural poor women and marginalized population
2. Improving the literacy status of rural poor women through action oriented literacy package and training
3. Integrate literacy with other development issues specially economic empowerment, root cause of all the vulnerabilities
4. Integrated, inclusive and sustainable livelihood promotion in SDG.

Technical capacity building:

1. CBOs and NGOs and support them in personnel and financial manual development and HR development
2. Piloting integrated innovative interventions in coordination with other partners and community
3. Engage community in identifying the issues of advocacy related to development with full respect to the people for whom it is, and work with them to review and monitor it for a successful completion
4. Development of different action oriented literacy modules based on the interventions for the illiterate and semi-literate people, develop training modules, train local people to develop local resources who can take charge of their community
5. Integrate relevant cross cutting issues in the ongoing programs specially focusing on GESI, HIV/AIDs and others
6. Communication and coordination with different organizations ( NGOs/INGOs), donors and local CBOs
7. Research and Evaluation of different projects in the areas of community development and economic empowerment, Gender equality and social inclusion, Democracy and good governance and expand our learning on vocational education

1. Program Strategy

Target Audiences Women, men, marginalized groups, youth, children, adolescents, persons with disabilities, old aged men /women, single women, people vulnerable to disaster, people living with HIV & AIDS (PLWHA), school teachers, community health workers and national and district level stakeholders.

 

Geographic areas (existing and proposed):

Samjhauta Nepal has an experience of working in more than 40 districts which is distributed in 7 provinces and 3 ecological zones of the country including Karnali. Samjhauta Nepal is open to expand its work in other districts of Nepal as well.

 

Modes of operation:

Samjhauta Nepal has experienced two different modes of operation and they are:

 

• Working directly: Working directly in the districts for the innovative piloting of integrated interventions has increased our capacity and knowledge leading to new and scalable learning.

• Organize community groups  in savings groups and link with local stakeholders for sustainability:  
• “dependency is not empowering” is at the heart of all the interventions and Samjhauta takes and appreciative approach to all the interventions
• A self-instructional curriculum fosters  group independence and sustainability, simplify to multiply and learning by doing
  Small group formation- Start in fertile ground and ensure that ownership rests with the women
  Literacy- and savings –led women’s economic groups- No traditional subsidies, women invest their own resources, interest accrues to the savers and women themselves are the bankers and the borrowers
  Microenterprise development- build on personal skills and gear to local
• materials and markets
  Rights and advocacy- promote social change, promote gender equality and social inclusion, education for all, resources for all , safe living, good governance
  Empowerment mobilization-seek the root cause of success, not the root cause of failure-Appreciative planning and Action (APA) and engender grassroots leadership and local control 
  Family days-include men, families, marginalized population and local stakeholders in the VDCs
  Sustainability and reliability-empowerment is the root of sustainability, localize project management
  Monitoring and evaluation- crucial to self- reflection and improvement

 

• Working in partnership: Working from the central level for the technical backstopping of its partners in the districts to build their capacity for the implementation, monitoring, supervision and reporting of the program through partnership. This mode of operation has helped us increase the accountability of the partner organizations during the program implementation and build their capacity in implementation, monitoring, supervision and reporting. The partners have demonstrated participatory approach in a sustainable and inclusive manner. 

Areas of interventions:

 

• Adult Literacy/ School Education
• Livelihood upliftment through income generation programs linked to vocational trainings and agricultural production, focusing on capacity building in skill transfer and product marketing
• Democracy and governance in line with New Constitution and ensure that Local Governance Act 2074 is implemented
• Environment and climate change
• Peace building and dispute resolution
• Disaster risk reduction
• Health/Sexual and Reproductive Health/HIV and AIDS/Nutrition
• Water sanitation and hygiene in community, schools and around in partnership with Govt and donors
• Capacity building in different areas including organizational development
• Advocacy and leadership development
• Awareness raising in different areas of need linked to SDG
• Networking among different stakeholders for sustainability
• Research and Development- short term and long term

 

• Cross cutting themes

• Gender equality and social inclusion
• Community advocacy in diversified issues
• Knowledge sharing through Success stories
• Community Rights and responsibilities/Civic education

1. Organizational Strategy

• Human Resources:

 

• Two types of staffing:  the core staff and the program staff
  On the job capacity building of the staff

• Training to transform knowledge and skill to the community volunteers through district based staff

• All the staff are guided by the personal and financial manual/policies approved by Samjhauta Nepal’s executive members.

• Other Resources
  – Regular fund raising through the local donors
  – Short term technical backstopping through curriculum development and training for INGOs and NGOs
  – 3 percent contribution by staff
  -Volunteers time contribution 
  – Support from the executive members as and when needed
  – Donation collection

Memberships
– NGO Federation
– National NGOs Network Group Against AIDS-Nepal (NANGAN)
– Civil Society Advisory Group – UN Women – Nepal
– Grant Management Committee-Program for Account
  ability in Nepal-World Bank Nepal

-A member of Women Act

-Advisory group member under Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare,    Kathmandu

Networking and Partnership
– Networking with the organizations for experience, learning and resource sharing. 

Localization
– Opening of branch offices to contextualize and localize our work in line with community’s requirements

 

6. Management and monitoring mechanism

– Presentation of the audit report, program report, annual program and budget plan in the Annual General Assembly.
– Quarterly monitoring by the Samjhauta Nepal’ executive board
– Monthly program and financial report to the donors
– In-house review meetings as and when needed
– Overall management is guided by the personal and financial manual/policies endorsed by the executives.

7. Sustainability

– Regular fund raising mechanism through the central office at the national level and district office at the district office.
– Regular scanning of the donors and their priorities meeting the priorities of Samjhauta Nepal.
– Regular communication, networking and coordination with the national and the district level stakeholders for strategic program partnership.
– Donation collection
– Membership fee
– 3 percent contribution by staff
-Volunteers contribution

8. Past Experiences:

Organization’s Main Achievement

• Networking with 245 district based NGOs doing women’s economic empowerment in 19 Terai and 2 hill districts.
• Networking with 6000 plus women’s economic groups – 50% of them belonging to marginalized population.
• More than 500 women’s economic groups have adapted Village Banking- an informal banking system where women are the borrowers and the bankers engaged in sustainable micro-enterprise development-strong COs doing informal partnership increasing reach to rural population.
• Networking with national and international organizations and a process in place of regular sharing of the lessons learnt.
• Have a well set up office at the Central level with 10 core staff.
• More than 125 publications made so far in relation to different projects as a part of IEC/ BCC material development linked with economic empowerment, new business development, peace building, sexual and reproductive health, leadership development, gender and social inclusion etc.
• More than 150 trainings conducted so far to build the capacity of local trainers and facilitators during implementation.
• More than 50 projects successfully completed during the last 14 yrs.

 

9. Ongoing Projects in 2018

S.N	Title of Projects	Donor Agencies	Location
1	Civil Society and Mutual Accountability Project	USAID Nepal through FHI 360	Kathmandu
2	Gender Justice for Brighter Future	Lakarmissionen, Mission East	Humla and Mugu districts
3	Capacity Assessment of Elected Local Leaders to Develop a Meaningful Capacity Development Program Supporting Local Development Process	The Asia Foundation (TAF)/AusAid,	11 municipalities and 9 rural municipalities of 10 districts
4	Increasing the nutritional knowledge and kitchen  gardening capacity of Musahar women through an awareness program and technical training in Lohana, Dhanusha District , Nepal	Canada Fund for Local Initiatives ( CFLI)	Lohana, Janakpur, Dhanusha district

 

10 Projects Phased Out in the last Five Years

S.N	Title of Projects	Donor Agencies	Year	Location
	Rooting Out Poverty/Rights and Opportunities for Women in Nepal	Mission East	April 2016 – December 2017	Kalikot
	USAID’s Business Literacy Program in Nepal	USAID	March 2014-February 2017	20 districts of west, mid-west and far west Nepal
	Pre-test the social and financial skills package and the efficacy of the proposed overall approach	UNFPA	3rd February 2014 – 31st May 2014	Kathmandu, Saptari, Achham
	Market Access and Water Technology for Women (MAWTW)	iDE Nepal (International Development Enterprises)	1st October 2013 – 28th February 2016	Kailali, Dadeldhura, Dailekh
	Empowering Vulnerable Women  in Humla and Mugu of Midwestern Nepal	Lakarmissionen/ Mission East Nepal	January 2013 – December 2015	7 VDCs of Humla and 3 VDCs of Mugu district
	Bringing inclusive CBDRR models into remote communities of Karnali, Nepal	Europeon Commission Humanitarian and Civil Protection (ECHO)	March 2013 to August 2014	Kalikot district
	I have a Voice: Women Advocating for Development in Nepal project	Mission East	April 2012-March 2014	Humla and Mugu districts
	SAMVAD Kendra for Empowering Adolescent Girls	Stromme Foundation, Nepal	September 2011 – December 2013	Rautahat, Makwanpur, Rupandehi, Surkhet, Kapilvastu and Bara districts

 

11. Publications:

Till now, Samjhauta Nepal has published more than 125 different types of IEC materials and some important among them are listed below:

Project Name: Gender Justice for a Brighter Future

• Part 1- Aadharshila (focus on Literacy and Numeracy)
• Part 2 -Village Banking
• Part 3 Entrepreneurial Skills

 

Project Name: Developing Resource Materials for Business Literacy Class for Women Farmers of Central Terai Districts of Nepal

• Business Literacy – Part I (Module 1 in Nepali)
• Business Literacy-Part II (Module 2 in Nepali)

Project Name: USAID’s Business Literacy Program in Nepal

• Literacy and Numeracy (Module 1 in English and Nepali languages)
• Nutrition Education (Module 2 in English and Nepali languages)
• Life Skills (Module 3 in English and Nepali languages)
• Entrepreneurial Skills (Module 4 in English and Nepali languages)
• Access to Finance (Module 5 in English and Nepali languages)

Project Name: Empowering Vulnerable Women from Humla and Mugu of Midwestern Nepal

• Literacy (Module 1 in Nepali language)
• Our Right (Module 2 in Nepali language)
• Towards Entrepreneurship (Module 3 in Nepali language)

Project Name: I have a Voice: Women Advocating for Development in Nepal project

• Part 1 – Literacy (Module 1 in Nepali language)
• Part 2 – Empowerment (Module 2 in Nepali language)
• Part 3 – Capacity Building (Module 3 in Nepali language)

SAMVAD Kendra for Empowering Adolescent Girls

• SAMVAD Conduction Guidelines (1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th parts)