UNNATI - Organization for Development Education,Strengthening Panchayati Raj Institutions,Rural Governance,Urban Governance,Social Inclusion and Empowerment

CIVIC LEADERSHIP AND GOVERNANCE

The programme tries to enhance civic engagement to strengthen voices of the marginalised and enable governance institutions to function in a transparent and accountable manner. Effort is also made to strengthen the participation and leadership of women and dalit elected representatives.

Since last year UNNATI is facilitating MGNREGS cell in Rural Development Department, Government of Gujarat. This has provided opportunity to enable transparency and accountability in implementation of the Act across the state. Strategy formulation and facilitation support was provided to have social audits across the state in campaign mode between 27th Jan and 7th Feb’10. 29 District level officials were developed as Master Trainers. They in turn oriented Taluka Resource Groups (TRGs) comprising retired teachers, principals and elected representatives in each taluka. TRG facilitated orientation of village vigilance and monitoring committees (VVMC) and supported them to conduct social audits in their respective panchayats. This strategy will slowly yield better results and be more empowering for the community as the process is not conducted by some external agency but by the village level committee. University students were engaged as external monitors and they attended 3,409 gramsabhas. A video documentary has been prepared about the process.

For facilitating collective learning on the social accountability tool of citizen’s report card (CRCs), an exercise was undertaken during May-Sept’09 with six NGOs in Gujarat on three services in 10 towns. A documentary has been prepared on CRC. Two teams from Ford Foundation visited on 20th Feb and 4th Mar’10 to understand social accountability approaches being used in Gujarat.

Since 2003, citizen collectives have been promoted in 40 villages of Gujarat. 120 identified citizen leaders from these villages are provided regular capacity building inputs. The citizen leaders have acted as change agents precipitating collective action on issues of corruption, liquor abuse and access to quality basic services. Success stories of 29 citizen leaders were compiled in a book called Nagarik Agewan: Je Pid Parayee Jane Re. It was released during a function to felicitate the citizen leaders on

Citizen Leaders as RTI Educators
The capacities of 14 citizen leaders identified from field experimentation area are being developed since Jan’09 to take on the role of RTI educators. They generate awareness on RTI through camps put up every week on pre-decided destinations and help people file and follow-up on applications.

	Till Mar’10
No. of awareness camps	289
People visited	4605
Applications filed	300

12^th Dec’09. TOT on the theme of Citizenship and Governance is organised every year for civil society organisations. There were 27 participants (11 female, 13 male) from 8 organizations in the TOT organized from 4th-6th Mar’10 at Bhachau.

Rajasthan witnessed the 4th round of gram panchayat elections after the 73rd Constitutional Amendment. UNNATI has regularly been doing Pre-Election Voters’ Awareness Campaign informing people about the importance of their vote, creating enabling environment for free and fair elections and helping the women and dalits to file their nominations. This time the campaign was a collaborative effort of The Hunger Project, PRIA and 21 organisations from Rajasthan. It focused on strengthening the leadership of women and dalits and realisation of their rights to vote and contest. As a special initiative in Luni block of Jodhpur accessibility of polling booths for people with disabilities was monitored.

Women’s Convention on Equal Opportunities and Equal Rights in Rajasthan was organized to promote solidarity amongst women leaders and felicitate their exemplary work in gender justice at community level. 250 women leaders from 7 blocks of 4 districts participated and 30 women leaders were felicitated. 20 women sarpanchs, 7 women elected representatives and 25 development practitioners from 9 districts of Gujarat attended a 1-day state level consultation organised jointly with Mahila Sawarj Abhiyan on 3rd Dec’09 to understand the status of women elected representatives and provide a platform to share their experiences, challenges and successes.