Pengal Pannokku Koottamaippu (PPK)

Social work has come a long way since the days of individual service to the poor and needy.  This type of service gave birth to the community development movement in the 20th century.  Like-minded individuals and groups, concerned about the difficult situations faced by many in our nation, and wanting to be of assistance, began to set up formalized bodies of community service.  With the advent of these formal bodies, schools began to offer specialized courses of study to those who wished to serve the community through these social service organizations, better know as Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs).

The arrival of service organizations and schools of social work helped the movement to progress from being service-oriented to welfare-oriented, and then to mature into a development-based approach in the ‘70s and ‘80s.  The last decade and a half has finally begun to see a move from community development to empowerment.  While each NGO may serve the community in different ways, be it through a holistic approach, focusing on a particular segment of society, or addressing a specific issue, the overall aim of all professional NGOs is to attain whatever goals that they may set in their vision and mission.

The Community Services Guild (CSG) came into being on September 8, 1980, and began addressing the issues being faced by tribal women in the Kalrayan Hills, self-employed women involved in micro-business in Cuddalore, Salem, and the suburbs of Chennai, as well as the problems being faced by women, youth, and children in certain slum areas of Chennai.

Like a few other professional NGOs, CSG realized the importance of gradually moving from community development to empowerment.  This process of empowerment enables the constituents to learn, understand, organize, and address their own issues and needs.  This process also allows them to eventually take over and self-manage the programs.  The empowerment process requires a sustained effort on the part of CSG in identifying the needs of the constituents, in helping find resources, and in developing a competent and qualified team of professionals, who in turn, help prepare the constituents for self-management.

CSG was the first NGO in the nation to successfully implement and enable the sustainability of this empowerment program.  Groups that had been under CSG’s programs for nearly a decade used the training received from CSG to form new organizations with the name Pengal Pannokku Iyakkam or PPI (Cuddalore, Salem, and Pattabiram).  The PPIs (each of which are separate organizations), once formed, remained directly under CSG’s fold for a period ranging from three to five years, during which time, the empowerment process firmly took root. Now, these PPIs are not only able to manage their programs and activities, but have also grown more extensive!  These PPIs are standing examples of the sustainability of empowerment.

Following the same example, CSG has initiated a similar process with those groups funded by the IFAD program and Mahalir Thittam under the name of Pengal Pannokku Koottamaippu (PPK).  This was the same empowerment idea with which the Tamil Nadu Government initially began this program under the IFAD scheme.  The formation of the PPKs is merely the first step in the process of empowerment of these women’s groups.  There is still a long way to go before complete empowerment can be achieved and the newly-formed organizations become ready to take over and manage their own programs.  Until such a time as this comes to pass, CSG will continue to work with these groups in order to help develop and sustain the empowerment process that has just begun.

Finally, even after CSG transfers the management of these programs to the PPKs (which is expected to take about three more years), CSG will continue to provide support, as needed, to these new organizations in the same way as it has done for the PPIs.