Update from India Competence: June

[Rituu B. Nanda]

India Competence is a network of organisations with a strong belief in community strengths and committed to the spread of AIDS Competence Process.The network is characterised by a non-hierarchical structure with a yearly rotating host organization starting with SIAAP and aims to (i) go to scale with the approach, (ii) adapt it to help communities respond to their key issues, (iii) coordinate the facilitation of local responses nationally, and (iv) influence national policy in support of local responses. You can read more on http://www.communitylifecompetence.org/en/165-india-competence/

I would like to the inform on what is happening in India competence lately. We are applying ACP among different groups from migrants to MSM as you can read in the updates from different members.

Indumathi and Prabakar, SIAAP, Tamil Nadu
SIAAP is organising two kick off events one for the federations of Female Sex workers and MSM communities and one for the SIAAP managers. Prabakar will also work on the logo of the India Competence team

Rafique, CARE India, Delhi and West Bengal
Rafique heads the EMPHASIS Team of CARE India. He is training the CARE team and the team of NGOs working on Mobility with SALT, and ACP, both theory and practice. The second workshop was organised on 3rd June which was facilitated by Rafique and Rituu. The team also drafted a Self Assessment Framework with one practice which it is tentatively calling as 'Mobility Self Assessment Tool’.

Sanghamitra and Divya Sarma, Samraksha, Karnataka
Samaraksha’s website is chock full of community stories. You will enjoy them for sure! You can read them on
http://www.samrakshainspirations.wordpress.com Bheri has been supporting the CBOs of women in sex work to have their second round of democratic elections for office bearers.

Bobby Zachariah, Maharashtra
There is great interest in a NGO in Pune to stimulate a community response to suicide. We are now ready to move out - we are looking for invitations to get into the neighborhood - of schools, colleges, housing societies, slums - anyone who wants to respond to this issue. There are about 5-10 volunteers who are now keeping their eyes open to invitations.

Fr Joe, People in Need Foundation, Nagaland
PNF is taking steps on Recognition and acknowledgement and self vulnerability in Self Assessment Framework in villages. PNF conducted training of 20 ACP volunteers from 12 villages in May 2010.

Zoengpari and Rituu B Nanda, Northeast India
A North East facilitation team was formed in May 2010. The team has a great bunch of people, fun loving and passionate about ACP. Some new people joined the team and it had a meeting on 3rd June. Now the team has 21 members from about 15 organisations. As some of the team members are new to ACP, they plan to hold an ACP orientation event soon.

[Gaston]

After my visit to Indonesia the last 10 days, I was so impressed with IndoCompetence. Now I can add IndiaCompetence to that list as well. Perhaps a peer assist between the teams on a challenge that one team faces could be interesting? Rituu, what do you think is a challenge for IndiaCompetence that IndoCompetence might provide experience on? Or the other way around.

[Olivia Munoru]

Wow. So much happening in India! I look forward to seeing the logo, and thanks for the link to Sanghamitra's blog. For someone like me, who has not yet had as many experiences with CLCP, and thus has a limited number of my own stories to share, I need to hijack other peoples'!!! ;-)

Best of luck to all in India.

[Ricardo Walters]

Love, love, LOVE it! Well done, India. Awesome progress.

Thanks for the summary, Rituu.

[Laurence Gilliot]

Congratulations to all of you! You are so full of energy and dedication. It is inspiring.