28 February 2005
Hyderabad

To
The SSF
Bangalore

Please refer our Email dated 19th February 2005.

Following the partners' meet in Bangalore and our discussions therein, Lok Satta has identified and defined an improved and better-focused approach towards catalyzing the federation and thereby, the empowerment of EWRs in Andhra Pradesh.

Our experience, over the past 3 years, has taught that despite the formal federation of EWRs in nine districts of AP, the initiative shown by EWRs was not very encouraging - due to various reasons (that have been outlined in our previous communications.) To improve upon this situation, Lok Satta has drawn upon the views and experiences from our partner states and:

· Will now go beyond the district level and will focus on prompting and assisting specific public/governance activities that will be led by the EWRs, in select villages and mandals of four districts of Andhra Pradesh. In total, we would be focusing on more than 100 villages of Andhra Pradesh, in order to provide targeted inputs and achieve measurable and replicable outcomes. Besides this, we will also concentrate in other 7 districts ie in Vizag, Krishna, Kadapa, Nalgonda, Mahbubnagar, Medak and Nizamabad limiting the activity to abut (30) villages.

· The earlier efforts in federating did not include anyone other than the EWRs and Lok Satta resource persons. But our new targeted approach would provide for the effective utilization of full-time district level coordinators, dedicated motivators at the mandal level as well as the services of several experts/professionals with established scientific credentials in the field of women's empowerment. The overall coordination at the state level would be taken up by Lok Satta.

· Lok Satta would be collaborating with like-minded and reputed NGOs, civil society groups and women's welfare groups across the state towards the fulfillment of the project objectives. For example, we would be working with credible organizations like KRUSHI (of Karimnagar Dist.), MARI and Women's Study Center (of Warangal Dist.), Jana Vigyana Vedika and Satyanveshana Mandali in other parts of the state.

These activities will be conducted as per our project AGREEMENT and in accordance with the previously agreed-upon availability of funds. A statement of the detailed financial implication is separately attached. The above approaches coupled with dedicated efforts from all those involved in this effort, are expected to 'kick-start' the federation of EWRs at the mandal and village levels as well as (help) bring visible improvements to the functional effectiveness of these EWRs. The nature and approach of these 'kick-start' inputs during the course of the next six months have been consciously designed to make the EWR led-and-initiated activities self-sustaining and replicable. Contingent upon the success of these efforts, the EWR's grassroot activities would continue into the foreseeable future, starting from October. It is hoped that demonstrable success of our efforts would lead to the autonomous spread of similar EWR-led activities, to areas outside the focus of this project.

The reports attached to this letter address these issues in greater detail.

Regards,

Bhandari Ankaiah
(General Secretary)