The RSPs’ work is based on the tried and tested principles of social mobilization that have touched the lives of millions of people in other countries of South and Central Asia. Increasingly, the RSP approach to social mobilisation, which entails the clustering of small community organisations, a reliance on community activists and the fostering of strong links with governments, has expanded across the South and Central Asia Region. Through the aegis of the Aga Khan Foundation, lessons from AKRSP in Gilgit were taken to Tajikistan in the 1990s, to be espoused by the Mountain Societies Development Support Programme (MSDSP). In 1994, under UNDP’s South Asia Poverty Alleviation Programmes (SAPAP), the RSP pioneer and now Chairman of RSPN, Shoaib Sultan Khan worked with the UNDP to set up pilots in the region to replicate the RSP approach. In Afghanistan, the National Solidarity Programme (NSP) was built on the principles espoused by Akhtar Hameed Khan and the AKRSP in northern Pakistan.
While the social mobilisation approach has been replicated on a large scale across these Regions, active collaboration between the Pakistan RSPs and others in the Region is also taking place to strengthen and scale up their programmes. Over the past year, RSPN staff has provided consulting services to UNDP Myanmar and the International Fund for Agricultural Development in Tajikistan to strengthen their social mobilisation. RSPN is also engaged with the Bangladesh based organisation, BRAC, in a research project which aims to capture learning’s from scale up efforts across South Asia and do a thorough, real-time documentation of the innovative projects of the RSPs in Pakistan. Other key forms of collaboration have been through experience sharing visits between staff as well as some village activists, who have visited other countries using social mobilisation.
The largest scale replication of the RSP approach is in India. This process started in 1994 with the South Asia Poverty Alleviation Programme in the State of Andhra Pradesh (the Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty – SERP) and has been scaled up nationally. Since 2010, SERP’s approach has been replicated in India through one of the largest poverty reduction programmes in the world via the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM).
The link between NRLM, SERP and RSPN is strong and we seek to continue to increase this collaboration going forward. RSPN and some RSP staff and activists have also visited Tajikistan in 2009 and 2010, and the first visit to the NSP in Afghanistan took place in late 2012, with NSP and Aga Khan Foundation staff and village activists visiting the RSPs in 2013. Similarly, there is active exchange between MSDSP Tajikistan and RSPN. In January 2014, a ten member team from Tajikistan comprising local government and MSDSP staff visited Pakistan for ten days to see the RSP approach first hand. The Tajik team visited Local Support Organisations in the Punjab and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces.Social mobilisation is not only a successful approach to reducing poverty; it has potential to be a strong link between Pakistan and its neighbours. Key elements of India’s programme have now been adopted by Pakistan’s RSPs and are funded by the Pakistan government, through the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF), provincial governments and other donors. This process was started after RSP senior management and some Pakistan government officials visited Andhra Pradesh in 2007. On this visit, learning took place ‘in reverse’ as it were. The RSPs adopted key lessons from SERP which assisted them in scaling up their programmes through community activists, federating smaller community organizations into union council level Local Support.Organisations; increasing the number of women in Community Organisations and adopting a new mode of financial services for the poorest, through Community Investment Funds. More recently, in late 2013, a thirteen member team of women cooperative members and entrepreneurs from Afghanistan visited Pakistan and had an opportunity to meet with community women involved social mobilisation and micro enterprise development.
Mr. Shoaib Sultan Khan, Chairman RSPN, is also Advisor to the Board of Trustees of the Rajiv Gandhi Mahila Vikas Pariyojana (RGMVP), a flagship programme of the Rajiv Gandhi Charitable Trust of India.
RGMVP, headed by Ms. Sonia Gandhi, the President of the Indian National Congress, has worked for poverty reduction through women’s empowerment, in Uttar Pradesh, India since 2002. Chairman RSPN has visited RGVMP twice upon the invitation of Mr Rahul Gandhi and met with many women’s Self Help Groups. The RGVMP approach is based on the RSP social mobilisation model which has also been the approach of India’s National Rural Livelihoods Mission, as piloted in Andhra Pradesh by the Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP), initially a UNDP funded programme with Mr. Shoaib Sultan Khan as Senior Advisor for Rural Development. RGMVP aims to organise poor, rural women into community institutions and promotes their financial inclusion, healthcare, livelihoods enhancement and education, creating links with local Panchayats.
The RGMVP website introduces Mr. Shoaib Sultan Khan as ‘A world renowned expert in rural development and winner of the Ramon Magsaysay Award. His pioneering work in India with the World Bank aided Andhra Pradesh Poverty Reduction Project inspired the setting up of India’s National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM)’. For details please click here.
A delegation from Afghanistan’s Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development (MRRD) visited RSPN from August 25 to 30, 2017. The seven-member delegation consisted of the Advisor to the MRRD Minister, Ms. Mariam Wafa, the Head of the Afghanistan Rural Enterprise Development Programme (AREDP), Mr. Rehmatullah Qureshi and other AREDP staff. The team visited the Sarhad Rural Support Programme’s (SRSP) areas in Swat district of Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa province, and National Rural Support Programme’s (NRSP) areas in Tehsil Gujar Khan, District Rawalpindi of Punjab province. At the end of the visits, a debriefing was held with Chairman RSPN Mr. Shoaib Sultan Khan and the Deputy Head of Mission from the Embassy of Afghanistan in Pakistan, Mr. Zardasht Shams. A farewell dinner was hosted by Chairman RSPN for the team on August 29, 2017. The dinner was attended by Mr. Sartaj Aziz, Deputy Chairman of Pakistan’s Planning Commission, Mr. Hazrat Omar Zakhilwal, Special Representative and Ambassador to Pakistan, from the Government of Afghanistan, and Mrs. Munawar Humayun, Chairperson of the Board of the Sarhad Rural Support Programme. The purpose of the visit was to study the RSP social mobilisation approach and to interact with communities, specifically women, who are working on agricultural and other enterprises. The Afghanistan team visited a total of six villages and two Local Support Organisations (LSOs). In Swat, the interaction with village communities was detailed and fruitful due to a common language and common social context. The team was exposed to the multiple institutions that communities had formed in Swat, including business groups of women who had impacted the lives of poor rural women. Visits were done to weavers and shawl makers in Islampur, to villages where vegetable marketing was being done by empowered women farmers, to Business Interest Groups (BIGs) working on honey bee farming, off-season vegetables and fruit processing of red and black persimmons and other dry fruits.
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