Thardeep Rural Development Programme is a not-for-profit integrated rural development programme working with poor and vulnerable segments of society particularly women in the most deprived and remote areas of Sindh Province. TRDP takes Social Mobilization as the foundation of its entire work. Through participation of community institutions, it undertakes programme activities under the major themes of income generation and poverty graduation elementary education with focus on girl’s education, maternal and child health, livelihood and enterprise development, food security, disaster preparedness and management and water & sanitation. In order to implement a range of integrated activities TRDP employs ‘capacity building’ of community activists and its staff as the key strategy. Social Research is a continuous process which complements both the operation and capacity building of TRDP programme.
Operating Environment
TRDP works in the most challenging atmosphere with poor and marginalized communities. It operates in a context where communities are deprived of the most constitutional rights particularly health and education due to their disadvantages of poverty and class differentiation. As the mission of TRDP stands, it works for integrating these communities into mainstream through awareness on social and political rights and collective voice. Such community groups at local and regional levels make alliances with and extend cooperation to similar nature of other civil society groups to access the opportunities, bridge the social and political gaps and empower them to endeavor for attaining social justice, gender parity and human rights as guaranteed by constitution of Pakistan. TRDP therefore is the major platform for poor communities to prepare them for mitigating the above-mentioned risks through self-help and collective voice. In the process of over a quarter of century TRDP has gathered significant experience of envisaging strategies to overcome crisis-political and social- keeping intact its identity of a right based organization.
European Union entered into a partnership with Thardeep in February 2016 under Sindh Union Council and Community Economic Strengthening Support (SUCCESS) Programme to be implemented in Dadu and Jamshoro Districts for five years.
Thardeep Rural Development Programme is an active member of Rural Support Programmes Network (RSPN). Besides, Thardeep is also associated with Child Rights Movement (CRM) and IUCN Pakistan. TRDP coordinates and takes joint-ventures with a range of Government departments at national, provincial and local levels promoting elementary and girls education, primary health care, particularly immunizations, natural resource management, water security, disaster preparedness and management, enterprise development, and comunity infrastructure.
TRDP’s Approach:
TRDP employs three-tiered social mobilization approach. The community organizations based at household level elect village organizations (VOs) which further federate in to the representative bodies namely local support organizations (LSOs). These VOs and LSOs add value of social mobilization to health, education, disaster risk management, income generation and climate change including natural resource management, water and sanitation. For the purpose a strong integrated approach is being employed, facilitating growth of “responsible community organizations”. The responsible community organizations mean organizations with substantial household representation, women participation and having required legitimacy. such as registration under relevant act. Such community institutions/organizations will build collective voice and scale for an effective interface with government bodies, other development programmes and market.
TRDP focuses on resource mobilization through building “multi stockholder partnerships. The strategy of crowding-in resources and complementing them with available expertise leads to the investment leverage. As a result, TRDP continuous to develop a critical mass of diversified resources along with in-depth coverage and scaling-up of programme. Besides, TRDP leverages the potential of building partnership with government in light of experience gained in process of UCBPRP. TRDP has contributed significantly to government interventions in the areas of health and education. This would be further leveraged through revival of LSOs and VOs.
The development of Thar Coal field and power generation has triggered a process of transformation for local communities in Sindh particularly in district of Tharparkar. This transformation from an agro-pastoral way of living towards industrialized society poses key challenges to local communities. TRDP realizes the importance of and strive for ensuring the proper compliance of socio-environmental safe guards in all the development projects being undertaken in the area.
Programme Themes
