About the Programme

The engagement will cover three programs that work on springshed management, watershed management and well rejuvenation. The issue in most of the target areas is reducing groundwater levels, reducing spring discharge, poor maintenance of dug-wells and other traditional water structures leading to poor access to water and water scarcity.

• Jharnadhara Springshed Management program

Jharnadhara is a pioneering Springshed program designed at scale which covers 616 springs across 4 districts. It is a collaboration of BRLF and Arghyam to support the soft components of the program while the implementation money is leveraged from MG-NREGA, Department of Rural Development, Government of West Bengal.

The new engagement will target all 30 springs of Gorubathan block of Darjeeling district with the reimagined capacity building model.

• Usharmukti Watershed Management program

Usharmukti is the first mega watershed project supported by BRLF and implemented by CSO partners. The project covers 55 blocks across 6 districts. It is a collaboration of BRLF and a few other funders like Ford Foundation, Wabag Foundation etc. to support the soft components of the program while the implementation money is leveraged from MG-NREGA, Department of Rural Development, Government of West Bengal.

30 micro watersheds of Rajnagar block (intensive block) and watersheds of non-intensive block if possible, of Birbhum district will pilot the digital capacity building model.

• Well Rejuvenation program

The program is about piloting a well rejuvenation protocol on 80-100 water structures across two districts of West Bengal. Funded by Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiatives (APPI), this project too seeks to leverage MGNREGA funds.

The new engagement will cover five intensive gram panchayats of the project in Matiali & Nagrakata blocks in the Jalpaiguri district.

The reimagined capacity building efforts are likely to touch approximately 18000 HHs. As the scale of operations is increasing, BRLF in collaboration with Arghyam would deploy the Capacity Building Solutions in order to improve the efficacy of their efforts across different phases of the project lifecycle.

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Key objectives of MCLLMP

• Create community ownership and involvement in landscape planning and implementing the programme
• Build capacity of first mile and programme staff on Natural Resource Management (NRM) and enhance their self-efficacy
• Develop a strong programme management capability

For Arghyam, this is a challenging opportunity given the scale of the initiative of the Government of Meghalaya. However, this partnership could help Meghalaya Basin Management Agency (MBMA) accelerate capacity building efforts across water and adjacent domains. This is also an opportunity to explore how we enable the programme such that it creates sustainable value to the whole ecosystem of actors and assets that are reusable within the State.

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FES is a recipient of Elinor Ostrom International Award on Collective Governance of the Commons
(2013) and many more awards.

About the Programme
Through Prakriti Karyashala model, the program aims to enable better governance and restoration of common-pool resources including water resources in 7500 villages benefitting at least 15,00,000 people.
It proposes to build the capacity of 2000 program actors, including government functionaries, to create impact at scale.

After realizing that it is not feasible to work at scale without pivoting their existing approach, FES has ventured into the journey of re-imagining capacity building in their programs and are deploying solutions to enable desired shifts.

Arghyam’s support to FES
● Re-imagine the CB approach in three different regions (Odisha 3500 villages, RJ 2000
villages, AP-KNK 2000 villages)
● Embed the new approach in the existing funded programmes (OLM-5 districts, ABF-2 districts, HUF-2
districts)
● Organise training sessions, provide access to atomised content, deploy attestation application
● Resolve issues during implementation through virtual guided mentoring model
● Encourage peer-to-peer learning in virtual mentoring sessions
● Monitor progress through dashboards

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