Year 2001-2010 has been declared by the United National as the  Decade to Roll Back Malaria ! Globally, 300–500 million episodes of malarial illness occur each year,  resulting in over one million deaths, most of which are among children under  five years of age.

CHURCH’S AUXILIARY FOR SOCIAL ACTION (CASA) has launched its pioneer programme on Elimination of Malaria and Kala Azar in Jharkhand in the Month of March 2011 with the support of Episcopal Relief & Development (ERD), Inter Church Medical Assistance World Health (IMA-WH) and GOVT of Jharkhand as collaborative form of cooperation. We are working among the Santhal and pharia tribes in 15 selected villages of most unreached region, which are Malaria and Kala Azar prone area, including the Santhal Pargana.  These vector borne diseases take its heaviest toll on the poor and vulnerable community, who cannot afford the preventive measures.

Ms. Ann Varghese, Senior Program Officer of IMA World Health, USA had recently  (November 18-22, 2011) visited some of these  intervention areas and interacted with the community members as well as some of CASA’s staff and volunteers working in these areas.  Here are some of the pictures taken by her during her visit.  Mr. Jonathan Routh, Project Officer, CASA East Zone accompanied her during this visit.

Pls click here to read more about CASA work in addressing Malaria and Kala Azar in Jharkhand state. http://www.casa-india.org/pages/images/Insecticide%20Treated%20Bed%20Nets.pdf

The RIAP (Regional Inter Agency Partnership) was initiated to increase cooperation between south Asian countries on various developmental and emergency interventions.  The planning and review meeting of RIAP was held in Dhaka during 29-30 November 2011.  The meeting was participated by key players of the RIAP.  Some of the prominent participants were  Dr. Sushan Agrawal, Director of CASA, Mr. Jayant Adhikari, Exe. Dir of CCDB, Mr. Mark Galpin , exe. Dir, UMN (United Mission Nepal), Mr. Nirmal Singh, HoE CASA, Mr. Prem  Maharjan, Dir-technical program, UMN, Mr. Pawan, CCDB, Mr. Satyajit Das, CZO CASA East, & Dr. Ms. Florina Bennoit, CZO, CASA south.

Year 2001-2010 has been declared by the United National as the Decade to Roll Back Malaria ! Globally, 300–500 million episodes of malarial illness occur each year,  resulting in over one million deaths, most of which are among children under  five years of age. The greatest burden of malarial disease and death lies with the  poor, who also have the least access to interventions against malaria. Malaria  control requires an integrated approach, comprising prevention (including  vector control) and treatment with effective antimalarial agents...................

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Capacity Development Initiative  (CDI) is a process for enhancing the capacity of individuals and organization to perform effectively to achieve the set goals.  CDI is done in two phases – Phase - I is Capacity Assessment & Phase - II  is Capacity Development based on the assessment.

A   National   meeting   was     organized   on 20th of October,   2011 at CASA Headquarters, New Delhi  to receive the draft report of CASA’S Capacity Assessment .  CASA   undertook   Organizational    Capacity  Assessment  (OCA) which is a health check up of  the  organization, in order to ensure the organization is effective , healthy and resistant in the current & fast  changing scenario. The process of OCA was a  self assessment   carried out by a team of 10   staff members and Ms. Joycia Thorat of CASA being the focal point and supported by an external facilitator – Mr. Rajendran.  This   process was spread over a period of 6 months beginning May 2011 and  conducted across the 4 Zones  of CASA cutting across the programmes. OCA Guide and Tool developed by  ACT Alliance CDI Team was used for  this purpose    but adapted  to CASA and  the Indian  context.

Why food as a resource is still relevant in CASA’s programme?  This question was the basis for a national level consultation of some key staff of CASA  under the leadership of the Director and Head of Emergency of CASA on 19^th October, 2011 in Delhi.  It was realised that, since a   significant percentage of resources comes to CASA for the FFCD (Food For Community Development) work in the form of food,   we have to give more  importance to the use of food as a resource in our development interventions.

The meeting discussed various aspects in the above mentioned direction.  Finally some of the key decisions that emerged were as follows:

CASA undertakes periodic Participatory Strategic Planning (PSP) and Perspective Planning processes to make its programmes and institutional structure relevant and appropriate to the external changing demands and pressures.  This helps us to steer a people centered transformative developmental processes relevant to time. In this direction , every 10 years CASA undertakes a PSP process .    The  current Participatory strategic planning process has been initiated in CASA for the year 2012 to 2022. In the existing PSP exercise, 11 CASA staff have been selected as working group by the management. The entire process has been facilitated by an external facilitator, Mr. Binoy Acharya  from Unnati and his team.

On 20^th-21^st October 2011, a meeting of senior management of CASA including the Director, CASA along with some of the working group members was held  at CASA Headquarters in New Delhi, to update the Sr. management on the PSP process with regards to the scope, design and road map of the current PSP process.