Two phases of Peace and Livelihood for Rural Poor (PLRP) of three years span were implemented by South Asia Partnership-Pakistan during 2012 to 2017. SAP- PK making efforts to create an enabling environment for democratic governance & effective citizen’s partnership through effective and positive voice of poor through mobilization meetings, entrepreneurship training of youth, assets delivery, advocacy, Lobbying, Networking, campaigns, conflict mapping, social harmony and cultural festivals and liaison building of village development committees. Village organizations become platform for collective raising voice and demanding resources for community development. The need to engage women at equal level as well along with men, with some extra effort’s women were inducted in executive bodies of these village groups.
Let us quote here evaluator: Women in such tribe and conflict prone districts comparatively are now actively participating in conflict resolution and for the community development process as well now.
Translating the principle of development into action under PLRP-phase-II 40 Village Organizations (VOs) were legalized under registration laws as institutions. Its membership based on 50% men and women, 50% youth, Person with Disabilities and minorities. Village organizations helped community to develop their village development plans and then facilitated communities to establish links with Government line agencies and with other resource provider to meet their development agenda in hand. It proves a successful initiative and build its niche to carry forward this wonderful aspect of PLRP ahead in phase III (2018-2020) while reassessing it in line with the progress achieved.
Phase III is actually an opportunity for SAP-PK to consolidate and deepen its gains and results of the last two phases spanned over six years. The real challenge for the next phase is to take output and outcome results to the next level of results where we can achieve and then share these results to the larger society and policy-makers. There is a strong niche to engage young girls and boys in building social harmony along with the provision of entrepreneurship skills and assets. SAP-PK with the help of local partners in phase iii would engage more young girls and boys who are still unemployed by giving them entrepreneurship trainings and assets provision. Along this, youth will be part of Village Development Committee’s structure in the phase III (2018-2020) to help them to be more productive element rather than burden to others.
Under PLPR-III, SAP-PK aims to increase the number of youth (girls and boys) for training and integration into social harmony, improve livelihood and strengthen community systems and processes. The trained youth will then become social assets for dealing with counter-extremism efforts of government and civil society. SAP-PK have added some district level activities which will help influence social fabrics and also showcase results to larger audience. PLRP aims to integrate volunteers & VOs into district level discourse, actions and joint struggle for social harmony and livelihood for poor.