Advocacy . . . Empowering the poor

This is part of a series of posts on other things we do in addition to clinical care.

Over the last week, one of our colleagues from EHA Central Office had come over to Ranchi to help us facilitate an advocacy workshop.

Mark Delaney has been in India for the last 17 years and since couple of years, he had been preparing Advocacy Manuals for Indian States. So far, manuals for the following Indian states have been prepared - West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand. Soft copy of the manuals for each of the states in Hindi and English is available in the EHA website. For West Bengal, the copy is available in Bangla too. 

Now, what is an Advocacy Manual? It is a document that facilitates to help the poor to access facilities which otherwise may be unknown to the public. In addition to a compilation of all the government programmes, there are sections on advice about how to go about submitting applications, copies of application forms etcetera.

So, we facilitated the organising of a workshop on the advocacy manual along with few likeminded organisations including churches.

Mark was quite brilliant in his presentations and communicated quite well on how this can be well used for the emancipation of the poor and marginalised in the society. Below are few snaps of the whole program.

Participative sessions . . .

Role play . . . 

Game on team building

A section of the participants

Another view of the sessions

Game on group dynamics

Another game . . . 

And the press reported us . . . 

All the organisations who participated took a unanimous decision to organise a forum to take this forward and take the responsibility of updating it on a regular basis. 

And before I sign off - a selection of verses from the Bible on caring for the poor . . . 

Matt 5: 13-16 

Matt 7: 12

Matt 22: 30-40

Mark 1: 40-42

Mark 8: 1-10

John 13: 34-35

James 2: 14-17 . . .

1 John 3: 16-18