A two day National Convention was organized in New Delhi on the occasion of 20th years of Bihar FORCES. On this occasion Bihar FORCES’s initiation, progress, challenges and achievements were discussed and a brain storming session was held to deliberate about the future planning of the network.
In this convention participants expressed their views regarding Bihar FORCES and its last 20 years work. Some of them are:
- Vision and Mission, Commitment, Critical Issues:
It was suggested that the new scenario of Child rights and emerging challenges to meet them, it is advisable that FORCES should revisit its goals, commitments and critical issues. Developments like enactment of Right to Education, MNREGA, NRHM, Unorganized Sector Worker’s Bill has changed our social and developmental dynamics and all this has to be thought over in holistic manner before going to next round of planning. Challenges like urban poverty, growing social disparity, displacement, new surge of globalization leading to privatization are some of the issues on which participants drawn their attention.
- Activities: Present and Past:
FORCES made pioneering efforts in the area of promotion of rights of children with substantive deliberation in organization in order to prioritize issues and strategies.
- FORCES as a network/alliance:
FORCES remain to be a unique experiment in Bihar as still no such network is functional at Bihar level. As a network it succeeded to bring various to bring together, women’s organizations, childcare organizations, academic institutions and other networks on a common platform.
Ms. Devika Singh raised few important issues for discussion. If we analyze FORCES previous work, Education Campaigns stands out as the most fruitful and powerful rallying point for the FORCES Network. It proved to be most vital factor in promotion of Early Childhood care, for cooperation between Regional Chapters and the National Secretariat and for extensive outreach to the Political establishment.
On second day of the workshop FORCES team visited centers of Mobile Crèches as orientation visit and observed various points which could be applied at crèches managed by FORCES.
Unique Helpline (0612- 6530 555)
Friday, May 14th 2010
Today Social sector employs various means and methods to aware people and for the dissemination of information among the community members. Somehow, these means have their own limitations and often people could not get the exact information which they are seeking. A Helpline can provide the accurate information regarding any scheme or services at a single place with just one phone call. Recently Helpline have emerged as one of the effective and most people friendly means of information dissemination. Provision of information dissemination through Helpline is just one step towards effective service dissemination among community people. At times people do get information and get sensitized but they remain unable to benefit themselves with these services due to improper actualization.
Bihar FORCES has set up a State level Helpline (0612- 6530 555) where people not only get information about various services, also they can register complains which Bihar FORCES team raises with the concerned Department at the State, District and Block level. After a person lodge a complaint through phone, s/he is also encouraged to send complain in writing. Various routes are followed in order to process these complains-
- Sometime complain is simply get forwarded to the concerned authorities and issues get addressed
- Sometime regular follow-up is carried by FORCES team in order to take the issue at constructive conclusion
- There is also grievance redress mechanism at the state and district level which are used to address the cases
Overall this Helpline found to be effective in order to promote -
- Advocacy for transparency and accessibility of development schemes to marginalized group.
- Linking beneficiaries, various departments and NGOs including Nidan.
This Helpline functions from 10:00 A.M. in the morning to 6:00 P.M in the evening |
