On Centre for World Solidarity

Centre for World Solidarity is a 15-year-old civil society organisation which functions in the states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Jharkhand, and Bihar. We work with 300 odd Non-Governmental Organisations that work closely with people (as individual organizations and as networks of organizations). We believe that because of our intervention with people in communities, we have some insights into their problems.

We have promoted the pooling together of insights of these 300 organisations, as well as several others who may not be linked directly. They have decided to work together and interface with the State on the alternatives they have developed through their work with the government and with the people.

Civil society organisations must coordinate with each other. They must also learn the skills and art of listening to the experiences of the people as well as pool these experiences together, as part of the input into policy formulation. Indeed that is the agenda that we have. Today, we are working on one aspect of KICS' agenda - what is it that we have read, what are our experiences.

We have considerable experience, but we have a lot more learning from each other, developing a methodology of keeping the faith, I think that is the agenda of this workshop.