Each VDT assigns three of its members to serve on a Union Volunteer Forum which is responsible for engaging with the Union Parishad on a regular basis and for mobilizing union-level mass action campaigns.
Union Volunteer Forum Formation and Meeting
Purpose of the activity:
- To strengthen the volunteer network for integrating and coordinating VDT-led actions as well as joint plan and joint advocacy for localizing and realizing SDGs.
Facilitation:
- Area coordinators and respective Union Coordinators
Preparation:
- 2/3 leaders from each VDT are selected/nominated by its members for Union Forum
- Develop a Union Forum member list
- Fixing date and time for the Forum formation
- Contact with Union Parishad and venue finalization
- Invitation to respective participants
- Village based report (progress, learning, challenges) development
- Other logistics preparation
Participants:
- Leaders who are nominated from VDT. Thirty to forty participants take part in this event
Duration:
- Day long program. First half of the day is used for inclusively forum meeting and other half of the day for advocacy meeting between Union forum and Union Parshad. One meeting is held in each quarter.
Financial cost items:
- Materials
- Food
- Venue
- Accommodation
- Conveyance for the participants
- Communication cost
- Multimedia projector
- Other logistics
What are the “transformative” aspects of this activity? It shifts the mindset of participants from what to what?
- VDTs are federated upward to Union level
- Better coordination and better mutual understanding among volunteers
- Scope of horizontal learning contribute to increase knowledge, skills and inspiration
- Sharing and identifying the learning, missing, and challenges that contribute to design the further plan of actions
- UP bodies are influenced to take joint actions
- Built good relation with Union Parishad
What are the content/factual learning objectives of the activity?
- To form broader level volunteer network structure
- To know each other about the village level program progress, best practices,missing and challenges
- To undertake collective mass action campaign
- To gain knowledge on contemporary development issues
- To advocate with UP body for joint mass action campaign
Flow: from “welcome” to “thank you” what are the spaces the participants are taken through? If there are “power questions” that prompt each step, what are they?
- Welcome speech
- Expectation and ground rules
- Village based program reports presentation
- Best practices, Missing and Challenges
- Celebrate the successes
- Planning for the next month
- Discussion with Union Parishad : Progress and plan
- Explore the joint plan of action
- Closing
Follow-up: what should happen after the activity and how will we record it?
- Same meeting will be held in quarterly
- All decision and discussion points are recorded in meeting minutes
- Copy of meeting minutes, plan, and participants list are preserved in Area and regional offices.