Our Strategic Choices: 2008-2017:

AwazCDS intends to assist local and national partners to work towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals of halving poverty and reducing hunger, promoting gender equality and promoting health related knowledge and empowerment of women, increasing environmental sustainability, and building a global partnership for development. Opportunities for AwazCDS to play a meaningful role, lie in its comparative advantage, as the only Learning and Knowledge Centre in the Southern Punjab. The organisation can contribute through its areas of comparative strength:

• Making knowledge useful

• Social Mobilisation

• Partnership and network building

• Capacity Building

• Reducing Poverty and Environmental Hazards

• Regional cooperation

• Policy development and advocacy

• Click here to See our Rural Security Triangle

• Making knowledge useful

  As a Learning and Knowledge Centre, AwazCDS is a catalyst for strategies and policy innovations. The organization and its partners build and test area knowledge databases, facilitate the widest possible exchange and sharing of area information and knowledge, provide the structure to allow those who need information and knowledge to find those who possess it, and build the skills needed for knowledge application. AwazCDS plays a pivotal role in Southern Punjab knowledge management, i.e. acquisition, modification, packaging, and sharing.
  
  Social Mobilization
  
  Mobilization of intended participants and beneficiaries of programmes, through formation of groups, participatory rural appraisal (PRA), and so on has been an important part of rural development and poverty alleviation programmes and projects in recent years. These processes have been found to help not only in improving programme delivery and outputs, but also in making a significant contribution to building social capital. They have also helped, particularly in relatively better endowed and accessible areas, in accessing resources, services, and markets for productive activities. In rural areas, however, these groups have often found it difficult, beyond a point, to use the awareness and organization they have built for themselves to improve their livelihoods because of limited access to productive resources and exposure to markets. Some success has been achieved in this respect by those organized around a common interest like production of similar commodities and use of common property resources like forests. In other cases, even where the groups are able to pool their resources, they have not been able to put them to productive use. Notable examples are those of the several women’s savings and credit groups through which large sums of money have been collected in small contributions, but have remained idle due to the lack of investing opportunities and/or of initiative on the part of programmes to identify and plan such opportunities.
  
  Partnership and network building
  
  AwazCDS presents a unique opportunity to bring together different strata of civil society on to a common platform where discussion, debate, and solutions to issues of mutual concern and cross-fertilization of ideas for sustainable development are made possible. AwazCDS has been fostering and building partnerships and networks in rural and urban-slum development at the local, national, regional, and global levels that would otherwise not be possible. Strategic enhancement of partnerships among agencies and institutions engaged in area development both within and beyond the Southern Punjab region are extremely important; and this includes fostering private and public sector collaboration, currently a rare phenomenon. As the voice and influence of a diverse civil society, especially of grassroots’ networks and associations, are growing in policy and public action choices, AwazCDS will continue to assist in providing local, national and regional linkages. AwazCDS will play a proactive role in nurturing local, national, and regional partnerships by linking micro and macro-level knowledge, facilitating networking, and sharing of experiences.
  
  
  
  Capacity Building
  
  Human capital, no doubt, has been found to be a major contributor to development and poverty alleviation. No other approach, either based on physical infrastructure development, capital investment or technology has been found to have sustained success unless accompanied by development of human capital, particularly education, technical skills, enterprise, organizational capabilities, and health. Most southern Punjab areas have a weak human capital base due both to limited access to social infrastructure and lack of exposure to knowledge and experience of activities that enhance human capital endowment. Efforts to improve the human capital base of rural people are essential for improvement in their general well being, but by itself if may not lead to alleviation of poverty because of the limited opportunities for its effective use in economically and socially productive activities. In fact, education, a major means of human capital formation, results in outflow of human resources, for that reason, resulting in a decline in the productive capabilities of the population in rural areas. It is well known that most educated persons migrate out of rural areas.
  
  Reducing Poverty and Environmental Hazards
  
  AwazCDS has been engaged in reducing poverty and addressing environmental hazards since its inception by carrying out appropriates projects including policy advocacy. During the strategic period 2008-20017 it will continue its focus on programs/projects on poverty reduction and environmental hazards. In addition, AwazCDS will execute projects rural based specific economic and social development in accordance with community needs.
  
  Regional cooperation
  
  AwazCDS addresses issues of a Trans-boundary nature where solutions lie in the interdependence between countries. Regional cooperation is increasingly important for sharing information and coordinating policies on a wide spectrum of issues directly affecting area people and those living extreme poverty and under-privileged. AwazCDS’s emphasis will be on areas that require countries to work together to streamline policies, procedures, and regulations; e.g. bring peace and harmony, preventive measures to mitigate effects of droughts and floods (such as sudden release of water in Sutluj and Bias River), exchange of technical information and databases for regional planning, and market opportunities that lie across national borders or require a joint strategy, to name just a few.
  
  Global warming and climate change are being increasingly accepted as phenomena with far-reaching implications on ecosystems and rural peoples. Increasingly unpredictable and erratic climatic conditions and more frequent incidences of droughts and floods that are attributed to climate change are already being experienced in many parts of the region. Unless preventive measures are taken to mitigate the impacts from such natural disasters, whole ecosystems and communities are likely to suffer irrevocable consequences. There is increasing demand and opportunity to take this initiative and develop new programmes to combat climate-induced disasters. AwazCDS therefore would start working to address some of these challenges.
  
  The alarming increase in violent conflicts in the region, fuelled by persistent poverty and various forms of exploitation and social injustice, is of growing concern. While AwazCDS does not have a mandate to engage with the political and security issues involved, it can foster regional cooperation in natural resource management and provide venues for the rights and equity of marginalized peoples to be supported through strengthening policies of decentralization – as well as supporting women-led institutions.
  
  Policy Development and Advocacy
  
  SAARC Regional member countries were party to setting the Millennium Development Goals and are increasingly committed to working towards fulfilling the targets set for the year 2015. AwazCDS will work closely with regional member countries to identify the innovative practices, policies, technologies, and approaches that are emerging as successful in the rural context for alleviating poverty, ensuring equity, and protecting the fragile environment in the region.
  
  Throughout the Southern Punjab, awareness is growing of the need for equal social rights and opportunities for social mobilization and participation in governance by women and marginalized groups in rural areas. The voice and influence of a diverse range of civil society organizations, especially grassroots’ networks and associations, is growing in policy and public action choices. AwazCDS can play a proactive role in nurturing such movements by providing the necessary knowledge and information support and by facilitating networking and sharing of experiences.
  
  Assisting governments to address emerging conflicts in the use of vital resources like land, water, and rangeland through identification of alternative policy options; livelihood opportunities; and creating rural sensitive support infrastructure are some of the key areas where AwazCDS can intervene to alleviate poverty in Southern Punjab's rural areas. Success stories in livelihood enhancement capitalize on opportunities provided by rural environments and cultures for specialized crops and products as well as sustainable and locally beneficial tourism and pilgrimage.
  
  AwazCDS will facilitate policy dialogue around these options through its formal and informal networks of public institutions, international and bilateral donor agencies, NGOs, INGOs, universities and training institutions, and relevant private entities so that regional member countries can use AwazCDS actively in pursuance of their development agenda. Support for informed policy advocacy and change will be the culmination of AwazCDS’s catalytic role in knowledge sharing. Improved documentation of the impact of various options will be used to provide empirical grounding for governments and advocacy groups to make policies more relevant and supportive of marginalized rural peoples.