“You start with what is the requirement of the people then they will come to you” said.......

Pardipura is a village which is situated around 25 kms away from the Ujjain district quarter. The name of the village came after the name of their cast “Pardi”. These people are nomadic in nature. Most of them are migrated to distant places like Delhi and near places of Delhi for eight to ten months for selling warm cloths. Rest of the people are living in the village and go for work in the field of other farmers in near by villages. From the people we learned that they do not have any appreciation about the panchayat and government schemes. They also were cheated by social workers from some other NGO. They have formed the group and took the money and went away from the people. Hence people were not ready to cooperate with the project. This was the situation where the project was still last month.

Project team visited the village on regular basis and motivated the people to get their support for the proper implementation of the project. Team explained them about the Jeevika project and its benefit for the people. How this project will help them to improve their life style especially their livelihood. They whole heartily welcomed the project and its strategies but they never materialised the activities in the project or be part of the programme. So we team had to report Caritas India about the hard situation and suggested that we need to change the villages namely pardipura and panbhihar. When Mr. Vinod Pandey visited Ujjain then Kripa took him in these villages. After the visit he counselled the cluster coordinator telling that “You start with what is the requirement of the people then they will come to you”. Of course since last three months cluster coordinator and coordinators in the Jeevika project were trying to identify the needs of the people and team become successful in finding out the requirement of the villagers. The project team identified the person who took the money of the villager and disappeared from the villages. On the request of the team that person came to the village and apologised his mistake and agreed that he will give back the money to them. After this incident villagers started to extend their support to the project. Mean while team also strengthened its relation with the panchayat. Following are the achievement at the Pardipura village.

• 15 house holds are ready to participate in the Gram Sabha

• One each farmers club and self help group formed in the villages

• 4 house hold in the target group submitted their application in the Panachayat for BPL card

• 20 farmers gave their soil for testing and received the result

• Community started to give positive support to Jeevika Staff.

By KRIPA Ujjain JEEVIKA team ( Monthly report of June 2013)