CSO Partnership in South Odisha: Renewed Stance

Learning to step back from a ‘leadership’ role, learning to partner without an agenda, learning to encourage the partner organization explore its potential and share its skills and knowledge is seeming to be a journey that PRADAN in Odisha is attempting.

Prologue

P artnership with civil society organizations (CSOs) is a much deliberated agenda at PRADAN. We have had different kinds of CSO partnership experiences in different places, over the years. In Koraput, we have had our share of learning, de-learning and re-learning. This article describes some of our experiences in our partnership in Koraput in the recent years. The objective of sharing this is, first, to have more people on board about the current endeavour and, thus, to draw inputs to further sharpen our steps towards partnership building with CSOs; and, second, the experience itself may motivate other teams to take up initiatives on similar lines.

Retrospection

We started working with other CSOs in Koraput, in 2012, with the emergence of the Orissa Tribal Employment and Livelihood Programme (OTELP) Plus project. During that period, the OTELP project was at its peak under the leadership of Mr. Sushanta Nanda, the former Programme Director (PD )of the project; PRADAN too was in the limelight after its good performance in Balliguda. Therefore, the idea of doing an OTELP Plus programme in consortium mode, wherein organizations such as PRADAN will guide four or five other organizations in implementation, came about.

This opportunity was discussed at the South Odisha Development Initiative (SODI), a network established for the development of South Odisha. Interested NGOs such as Harsha Trust, Chetana Organic Farmers’ Association, PRAGATI, Livolink Foundation and PRADAN came together to form a consortium to take up the project in Koraput. The NGOs asked PRADAN to be the lead NGO and hold the secretariat for the consortium, to which PRADAN agreed. Through this partnership, PRADAN hoped to build associations with other CSOs and, through them, reach a larger number of families in Koraput district, who would then, be directly or indirectly benefitted.