Village knowledge centre toolkit
Community participation is found to be essential, and although listed in the Toolkit as step 2, it in fact runs through the project continuously. The agency needs to build a partnership with a cross-community group of stakeholders, taking care to ensure that these are not dominated by self interest groups or individuals. The community is strongly encouraged to support the proposed centre both in cash or kind to develop full ownership, and to provide volunteers to run and support the VKC. This will not be done by the agency, who will manage the local hub only. The agency will however visit the VKCs on a regular basis. In one village there is a significant Dalit community. The VKC was deliberately established in their area, to ensure the Dalits had access. Higher caste villagers would make use of the VKC in this location, either directly or indirectly, if they felt it useful. They would however not allow Dalits to access a VKC in their part of the village at all, hence the choice of location to ensure equitable access to all.
|
|
| Image © MSSRF 2006 |