Lok Manch Workshop

23^rd July 2019, New Delhi: Fr. George Pattery, President of South Asian Jesuit Conference delivered the Inaugural speech at the National Workshop on Social Security and Good Governance-Realizing Entitlements which started on 23^rd July and scheduled to continue till 25th July. Speaking at the occasion, Fr. George said that, “The current developmental model is one sided and one dimensional which is creating more vulnerable groups, we hope for a developmental model that is more integrated and inclusive”. He further added that, “True development means real atmasantooshti(self-satisfaction). let’s hope for maximum atmaasantooshti through this Lok Manch program”.

The workshop started with Recital of Preamble of our Constitution by Fr. Joy K, reading and leading the audience present at the workshop. Earlier, Mr. P. Krishnamoorthy, National Coordinator, Lok Manch, welcomed every participants and thanked them for taking out time to participate in the workshop.

The objectives of the workshop was to demystify and clearly understand key important Social security schemes implemented by various sources and gain information on those schemes to introspect major policy level as well as implementation gaps on the ground and deliberate with backdrop of grassroots experiences and case studies and to chalk out strategies and recommendations for enhancing accessibility and demanding realizing the goal of social security in practice and to follow up with the engagement of communities.

Through this National Workshop an attempt was made to bring people, experts and communities together to focus their attention, place their priorities and highlight concerns into looking for common solutions through accumulated collective learning.

The workshop is organized by, Caritas India, FIAN India. Lok Manch, Indo- Global Social Service Society, Indian Social Institute, Bengaluru. Indian Social Institute Delhi, National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights, National Federation of Indian Women, National Campaign for People’s Right to Information, Pension Parishad, Right to Food Campaign and Oxfam India.

About Lok Manch
Lok Manch is a platform of community leaders and civil society organisations to do advocacy at panchayat /ward, block, district, state and national level for the rights of the marginalised communities. Lok Manch (LM) is a human dignity inspired people’s movement. It is primarily a governance advocacy initiative; at the local level it aims at strengthening grassroots governance and democracy with live linkage to state and national level governance, accountability and policy change initiatives.

Lok Manch’s three fold objectives is to promote implementation of the regional administrative bodies’ integration plans and of the National Food Security Act (NFSA), Schedule Caste Sub-Plan (SCSP), Schedule Tribe Sub-Plan (STSP), Water, Sanitation & Hygiene (WASH) & Government schemes, Improve access to NFSA and SCSP/STSP/WASH and related government schemes, identifying of gaps in policies and taking up those issues with concerned Govt authorities for further improvement.

The project has been operational in about 1800 hamlets, reaching out to nearly 300,000 families  in 12 states of India with 92 CSOs implementing the project at the grassroot level focusing on enhancement of their access to entitlements.