Skip to main content

Meeting with Ekam Foundation, Regional Officers

28th November 2013, Sadhana Kuti, Sevayoor Mulgai Campus, near Kariapatti - It was great to spend a day with the Ekam Foundation Regional Officers (ROs) discussing social 'change management' processes and their own institutional core values and strengths. These young professionals will be working at the district level, creating community based platforms for effective facilitation, monitoring and implementation of health care policies and programmes of government as well as proactively taking up healthcare initiatives, particularly for pregnant mothers and infant care (Ekam Updates in their Blog). They all had just finished a phenomenally successful Joy of Giving Week campaign and its follow-up work in most of October and November (details here). 

In two sessions lasting over 5 hours, we covered a extensive range of subjects centered around the change management processes that need to be internalized by the ROs for their work will community based institutions in the districts of Tamilnadu. In the process we busted several myths to do with knowledge and knowledge processes.  The discussion panned from social organization among the communities, identification of challenges for the communities, resolving issues through a participatory method, role of traditional knowledge systems, social and political relevance of community based institutions and understanding, measuring and recording the impact they are creating in health care sector.

Quite impressed with the level of commitment and sense of purpose among the young (the average age was 24 in the room) team of ROs and their response was quite positive. The management team has promised follow-up sessions with the ROs team.

Comments