Social Mobilization

Preparation of village profile
Contacts with village activists
Group meetings with cross section of community members, Village meeting where SUNGI programs are introduced to village representatives
Identification of primary groups
Joint village meeting to establish terms of partnership
Primary training in social organization
Group formation
Village development planning

All these steps could take 6 to 12 months before a formal contract of partnership is finalized. The logic behind this partnership is to enhance the institutional capacity of communities to implement and manage their development programs through participatory approaches to serve as the primary advocates for institutional change. To achieve this goal communities are mobilized to form Village Committees at the grassroots level. These village committees, however, are more than a project implementation body. They provide platform to address a range of social political, environmental and economic issues. These community based social organizations are often the most catalytic entities. SUNGI’s social mobilization paradigm subsequently places community based SOS at the center of advocacy and lobbying campaigns focused on progressive policy changes. Therefore, the capacity building of these institutions is of primary importance to SUNGI in general and Social Mobilization section in particular. Since 1994 SUNGI has developed a series of social organization trainings intended to enhance the management and organizational capacities of partner communities. SUNGI is currently working with 9,776 activists through 267 men and women Village Committees.

SUNGI’s social organization approach through out this process focuses upon sub-village level organization, or VCs, as the primary unit for programmatic interventions. The subsequent village and Area Coordination Councils are promoted as representative bodies of men and women community activists mandated to provide essential support to initiatives that require; greater responsibility sharing, inter-village coordination, external networking and lobbying. SUNGI believes it’s out reach to marginalized and poor households will be enhanced by this approach.

Another important feature of SUNGI’s Social Mobilization approach is the facilitation of Village Development Planning process at the village level. In 1994, in an effort to develop a planning and analysis framework, which could reflect the development challenges of local communities accurately, SUNGI started using participatory analysis methods of Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) and Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA). But the search for an alternative framework, which could serve as a bottom up planning tool continued till, the concepts of Village Development Plan was worked out. The process was initiated in 1997. So far SUNGI has completed 119 village development plans successfully. The process however, is under constant evaluation in order to make it more effective planning tool both for partner communities and SUNGI as an organization

Yet another distinct feature of SUNGI’s social mobilization approach is transparency and accountability, which is embodied in Zonal forum. A Zonal forum is a regular activity of social mobilization program aimed at evaluating two-way implementation of planned initiatives that is Community vs SUNGI. A total of 36 forums have been conducted so far. Besides 16728 activists have received primary training in social organization of which 7230 are women 606 have been given Secondary training including 215 women.

It is important to note that central to the SM approach are particular values that have been developed institutionally over the years by SUNGI. These values include; participation of the people involving marginal and deprived communities, promoting democratic and transparent practices at the village level, institutionalizing gender equity in all program interventions, building advocacy capacities of partner communities, and equipping social organizations with skills to analyze the socio-political realities of the system. A significant investment has been made to an organizational culture that effectively operates according to these values.

Since SUNGI is working with local communities where social dynamics are in constant flux. Therefore, SUNGI also reflects upon its experiences and working mechanisms on regular basis. In early 1999 an exercise was undertaken by SUNGI to review its programs and governance structure in order to make them more effective and relevant to field realities. During this exercise three functions were integrated into the mainstream SM program. These include; Local Advocacy, Action Planning and Organizational Maturity. Moreover, hiring additional staff strengthened the SM section. This section through building local pressure groups addressed the Local Advocacy issues identified in the Village Development Plans. The Action Planning involve reviews and monitoring have Village Development Plan and processes involved in it. The organizational maturity function of the SM section implements Participatory Organizational Maturity Mapping (POMM). The pilot testing of POMM was completed in 1999 and is being implemented on full scale now. Moreover in year 2002 the Area Development Plan was also introduced starting from Bakot zone. In this process the newly elected local bodies members also participated. The exercise paved way for future collaboration between communities and local government representatives besides government line agencies.

Challenges faced by Social Mobilization Section:
Increase in poverty in recent years has crippled people’s capacity to volunteer for mobilization because people are primarily concerned with livelihood earning activities. Plus the over all instability of the regional peace and insecurity has reduced people’s faith in their own ability to mould their situations in their favor. Added to this lethargy is the existence of exploitative local structures that still persist for SUNGI as an organization, state NGO relationships are a constant strain. If anti NGO elements gain power, working environment for SUNGI will be tough. Besides that conservative elements of Pakistan in general and Hazara in particular are engaged in anti NGO, Anti SUNGI campaign. Their negative propaganda prejudices communities making social mobilization all the more difficult.