EVOKATION

MY EVOKATION - ESTABLISHMENT OF COMMUNITY RESOURCE CENTRE

Submitted by Evoke Agent: Nangar Soomro, Pakistan, email: brain8work@yahoo.com, Flate no.10, Block 2A, Gali no.27, Sector I-8/1 Islamabad, Pakistan. Tel : 0092-332-5455248

This evocation is submitted in order to develop a resource centre for community which has been my dream to initiate. Evoke Network has provided me insight and encouragement along with very good opportunity to go ahead with my passion through Evoke and WBI support. The community resource centre would be centre point in target vicinity in terms of providing free career counseling, awareness raising on social programmes and issues and helping the local community to acquire skills and know how which can make difference in their living style and contribute in the community empowerment.

The Resource Centre with the Name of Evoke Network Resource Centre would be established to achieve the following objectives;

1. Information sharing on different social development initiatives such as social safety nets, basic health, primary education programmes and skills development programmes etc started by Government and Non Government Organizations for less privileged and poor segment of the society.

2. Arrange Information sessions for the community in order to promote the indigenous knowledge and sources locally available.

3. Linking social development initiatives with its target group, developing social engagements among the community and different programmes.

4. Helping them to get registration with Government, recording the birth of their children and registering their vote record.

5. Assisting local women to participate in economic activity through providing them entrepreneurial skills and suggestions along with linking them with micro credit and like initiatives.

1. The Place. The resource centre has to be initiated from a poor and remote area of Karachi District at Pipri (Bin Qasim Town – Karachi- Pakistan). Pipri has population of around 80 thousand people (51% females and 49% male – around 23% of children among total population). Most of the population lacks basic education and have no access to information. The proposed initiative has to be resource centre for them. The place selected has been number of times visited by me and I am very well known of the place during my assignment of different safety net programmes. I analyzed the need of resource centre here.

Resource Centre would be started with the area mentioned and based on more funding and local resources these type of Resource Centers would be replicated in other less privileged areas.

2. The Challenge. Access to right information has been a challenge for the poor, vulnerable and less privileged communities. There are different programmes initiated by the Government, NGOs and private entities but lack of information on different programmes and projects have kept most of the deserving targeted population away/far. The proposed Resource Centre would play a role of bridge between right people and right initiatives. It would help to link the deserving target population to the different suitable initiatives. Secondly aim of resource centre is to provide technical and career counseling to the youth and women in the area. The indigenous knowledge has to be promoted and presented in a way that can make difference in the area. It would help to solve the local problems through the local solutions available with community. Expected beneficiaries are young and able bodied women who would be linked with technical skills programmes and micro credit, youth would be linked with the small enterprises development organizations and generally population would be informed about the basic services available and how to get benefit from those.

3. The Idea. The resource Centre would be run through the community. Community at the target area is willing to allocate two rooms portion of building initial without any rent to start the Resource Centre. It has been confirmed and further they are ready to sign it on paper to allocate it for the resource centre. This resource Centre would be a community centre/gathering place where sharing of ideas and information would be encouraged.

· The committee would be formed to look after and run the office of Resource Centre. It would include the Chairman of committee (office bearer) and supporting counselors for management of the resource centre.

· The list of volunteers would be prepared among communities who have information and indigenous knowledge and visiting fellows list would also be prepared who have technical and special knowledge and they have time to dedicate for the community.

· Weekly sessions would be planned for different segment of the society Children, Women, Youth and Elderly on variety of topics, social safety net programmes, methodology to apply for these programmes, education and health initiatives, basic requirements for each programme, micro credit and technical skill programmes etc.

· The special sessions on Environment, Gender Issues, Water and Energy etc would also be arranged to spread the right information among the targeted population.

· There would be few learned and educated people engaged for supervision of resource centre and planning for its development and expansion in terms of services and quality.

4. The Money. What would you do with your first US$1,000 given or invested in support of your vision?

First Community Centre would be established from first US $ 1,000. Office Furniture, office equipments and a computer would be purchased initially in order to start. Evoke-WBI would help to establish the initiative and take start.

Volunteers: We have identified 16 Volunteers of the area who would be working with us in this initiative. They would be contributing in spread the word for the cause, helping in better management and looking after of the Resource Centre and finding sources of donations for the cause. This initiative would be more community driven and overall supervised by me and few of my friends who are working in development sector and have experience of managing this type of initiative.