HANDS policy making institution is executive committee, Chief Executive works as per guidance provided by them. Deputy Chief Executive and seven General Managers work under him. They lead different programs with the support of team. General Managers are based at head office Karachi. All General Managers provide facilitation in project strategic planning, development, trainings,
monitoring & evaluation, human and financial resource mobilization to the district teams. The district teams are led by District Executive Managers.During 2007 – 2008 HANDS addressed all the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in intervention population. HANDS strived to achieve MDG1 to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger through its Poverty Alleviation and Health Advocacy Program. HANDS worked on MDG2 to achieve primary education through its Education and Literacy Promotion Program. We intervene on MDG3 to promote Gender equality and empower women through Gender and Development Program and education literacy promotion program. HANDS worked on MDG4 to reduce child mortality MDG5 to improve maternal health through health promotion program. We also worked on MDG6 to combat HIV/AIDS , Malaria and other diseases with health promotion program. HANDS also worked on MDG7 to ensure environmental sustainability through infrastructure development and Poverty Alleviation Program. We also worked on MDG8 to build global partnership through our Institutional Development , Information & Communication Resource Program and networking by other cross cutting programs.HANDS Human Resource & Institutional Development (HR & ID) Program offers specialized services to public and private partners in training need assessment, training design and curriculum development, Capacity Building of trainers, Development of training manuals, Training of trainers, Training appraisals & evaluations, Human Resource Management and Institutional Building.Considering the fact that HANDS is extensively involved in capacity building of public and private sectors institutions there was a dire need of erecting an infrastructure as an institute. HANDS therefore purchased 6.63 acres land near the tool plaza on superhighway Karachi to Hyderabad which is literally at the gateway of Karachi to establish and develop Institute of Community Development (HANDS ICD). HANDS offers different training packages that is, 16 courses on Gender & Development, 14 on Health, 15 on education, 09 on Research, Monitoring & Evaluation, 06 in Information and communication resource, 08 in Poverty Alleviation, 06 in Resource mobilization and 10 in other subjects. HANDS Health Program offers several tested strategies like project designing and implementation. HANDS Health Promotion Program designed and implemented more than 26 projects with public and private institutions throughout Sindh. Three major research studies on reproductive health and family planning services were conducted. HANDS Health Promotion Program as a part of its professional development strategy developed the capacity of 1011 professional staff through 139 trainings of which 34 got diploma of 18 months in community midwifery and completed this program in 2008. HANDS Health Promotion Program has services as one of its strategies includes establishment of Community Midwifery Training Program. Two schools have been established one in Karachi and the other one in Hala, District Matiari. Both of these schools are attached with functional secondary care facilities so that Community Midwives (CMWs) get exposure to clinical practices and community at the same time. HANDS Health Promotion Program also developed public private partnership strategies like adopting a government health facility project. The process of adopting a government health facility starts with identification of partially/non functional govt. health facility and signing of MoU with the district government. Later HANDS forms Health Management Board, opens joint account and initiates user charges in consultation with district government. Community Midwifery Training school is also established in hospital premises and health management information system is established. HANDS Health program is running huge family planning intervention in all districts with the objective of increasing demand of family planning, repositioning birth spacing as a health intervention and to address the unmet needs by improving knowledge and access to quality family planning and birth spacing services in all the districts of HANDS intervention. HANDS also extended its partnership to implement these programs with Rural Support Program Network (RSPN) and their representative National Rural Support Program (NRSP), Sindh Rural Support Organization (SRSO), Thardeep Rural Development Program (TRDP), Sindh Graduate Association (SGA) in districts Thatta, Sukkur, Umerkot and Sanghar respectively. HANDS Social Marketing plan is consumer focused. The project has trained community based workers in social marketing and has established supply chain mechanism. More than 400 providers are engaged with HANDS social marketing team. HANDS market products like safe delivery kit, contraceptives pills & condoms, emergency contraceptives, essential medicines, sanitary pads , oral rehydration salt etc. School Health Program methodology detects primary impairments of students, administer de-worming, develop health monitoring mechanism and establish referral for treatment of ailing students at secondary care health facility. HANDS Life Skill Based Education (LSBE) model starts with signing of MoU with the district government. Educators are identified from public sector high schools and are trained in life skill based education for onward training of Govt. High School Teachers. These teachers teach students LSBE in classes VI, VII, VIII, IX and X. HANDS has trained 8 Educators (Master Trainers) and 34 Govt. High Schools have adopted LSBE curriculum, 49 Govt. High School Teachers have been trained and have improved knowledge, positive attitudes and life skills of 2327 adolescents (students). HANDS Education and Literacy Promotion Program improves the literacy status of poor, marginalized children and adults through formal and non formal education both in private and public sectors through •specialized strategies like research. HANDS Education and Literacy Promotion Program has conducted 6 different researches in intervention areas. One of the strategies of the program is project designing and implementation. The program has designed and implemented more than nine projects in different districts of Sindh. HANDS Education Promotion Program has published more than 17 publications. One of the strategies of HANDS education program is to develop capacity of educators. In this regard 51 trainings and 9102 on job sessions were conducted for 1065 Govt. staff, community teachers (male & female) and community members (males & female). To develop the capacity of Community Organizations (COs)/School Management Committees (SMCs) as well as community members, 56 trainings were conducted and 933 members were trained. HANDS organized 23 external and 49 internal trainings on different subjects for HANDS staff. 148 trainees were trained in external and 543 in internal trainings. All trainings were organized through need assessment of the individuals. HANDS Early Childhood Development (ECD) model incorporates and institutionalize a range of replicable supports for children’s overall development as confident, capable, creative and caring persons. This is an integral part of the education system and implements with the participation of the communities. The scope of the model is to ensure access to quality education and improve the quality of teaching/learning in government schools kachi classes and classes 1 and 2 with an emphasis on reaching girls and poor communities. HANDS literacy course is phonetic based and encompasses social issues focused to develop a functional literate. Program offers six months course to become literate. The literate later may join Family Reading Program (FRP) and help his / her illiterate family members to get literate. Periodical monitoring and supervision is done by the field team. HANDS Poverty Alleviation Program (PAP) as a part of its strategy has designed and executed 16 projects in different districts of Sindh in partnership with public and private institutions. PAP works on professional development and provides opportunities staff to build their capacity in different walk of life. In this regard 31 trainings were conducted for HANDS staff in which 218 staff have been trained.17 of these trainings were conducted internally and 14 were organized by other public and private institutions. One of the approaches of HANDS to address poverty is to enhance income generation skills in men and women specially in youth. HANDS has established three technical training centers in Karachi Rural, Matiari, and Thatta. They offer training courses in garments cutting & stitching, and embroidery. During 2008, 108 rural community adolescents have been trained. The aim of this intervention is to improve socio-economic condition of under privileged communities specially mothers /caretakers with the provision of income generating opportunities through skill enhancement trainings and establishment of enterprises. HANDS encourages local indigenous home based skills of handicrafts through selection of potential women for skill trainings, they are called “Sughar”. The process involves many steps like; identification of local indigenous trade and analysis. HANDS has conducted more than 600 skills enhancement trainings for more than 5000 trainees. Another strategy of PAP is “social mobilization for microfinance project (SMF)”. This project is working in six districts of Sindh that includes Hyderabad, Matiari, Thatta, Badin, Tando Allah Yar and Tando Muhammad Khan. HANDS has generated 20168 members in 2008 for micro-credit disbursement. The approach of SMF is to mobilize the poor to form community groups for micro credit, enhancing capacity of the credit group members for community mobilization, social awareness, selection and management of income generating activities. Develop skills and providing basic community management skills to credit group leaders. This methodology facilitates Loan Products like Agriculture Development Loan, Livestock Development Loan, and Working Capital Loan. HANDS has facilitated Khushhali Bank Ltd. and community groups to disburse Rs.164.09 million. HANDS with the collaboration of partners and local communities constructed Community Physical Infrastructure (CPIs) in intervention areas like; 81 street pavement, 8 drinking water supply lines, 91 drinking water schemes, 31 rooms, 10 wash rooms, 193 color & painting of class rooms, 9 vocational centers, 7 culverts, 7 eidgah boundary walls, 4 libraries and 7 hand pumps. HANDS Information & Communication Resource Program (ICR) designated to communicate to the people and disseminate information of what we are working at HANDS in the sectors of health, education and poverty alleviation. The program works closely with all the programs and projects working under aegis of HANDS. ICR Program is a very diverse program of HANDS; at one end it deals with the publication and material development and on the other hand it develops human resource and highlighting the issues of social development. ICR Program has published 66 publications in 2008. HANDS quarterly Newsletters in Urdu & English is a regular feature of the ICR Program which also brings out annual profile of HANDS. Material (brochures, leaflets, posters) published to highlight various issues and messages for community in Urdu, Sindhi and English. Program has trained more than 367 members of HANDS, NGOs and COs in Strategic Communication, Press Release, Report writing, Library Management, Case Studies, Designing & Publishing, Letter to Editor, Script writing. ICR Program conducted various researches in collaboration with MER Program and developed BCC strategies based on the finding of these researches. These BCC strategies were developed based on the approaches; Reproductive health,Family Planning, social marketing products, Maternal and child health, Releasing confidence and creativity, Social mobilization and micro finance, and Life skill based education. HANDS Gender And Development (GAD) Program serves to promote rights of women in all projects and interventions. The focus is to provide equal opportunities to women in every sector of development. HANDS GAD intervenes in 18 districts. The geographical reach is in 51 Taulkas, 323 Union Council, 14962 villages and 817,1915 populations. GAD program has benefitted 92401 members of 7731 community organizations, 260 village based women entrepreneurs (Sughars), 447 HANDS Technical Training Center (HTTC) trainees, 4574 school management committees members, 350 MARVI workers, 172 LHWs and 350 TBAs. GAD Program has conducted 4 different researches on different topics of women issues. This year GAD Program conducted different trainings for Communities, government and NGOs representatives. Hence, 9447 trainings were conducted in which 64672 participants were trained. Community organizations are integral part of HANDS in all community based interventions. HANDS social mobilization strategy starts with the mobilization of community and formation of smallest group on each 5 to 8 households called community/para rganizations. HANDS social mobilizers conduct mobilization meetings with community/para organizations. The members of community /para organizations nominate one of them as focal person to represent at Village Development Organizations (VDO). Each VDO comprises of 10 to 15 focal persons. VDO is considered as elected body of village and community / para organization of the village. After the formation of VDO the office bearers of VDO get trained by HANDS in different topics of social mobilization and organization management. Later they form a network at each union council level where chairperson of each VDO represents his /her village. GAD Program provides opportunity to HANDS staff as well to build their capacity, in this regard 31 trainings were conducted in which 218 staff members have been trained. In this year three exposure visits were organized and 37 staff members have been exposed to various skills and experiences in different institutions. More than 5 publications were developed by GAD Program HANDS is proud to possess a strong monitoring and evaluation system, which not only enables it to meet its program objectives successfully but also to ensure facilitation to other public and private institutions in the area of MER. Millennium Development Goals are addressed through different projects of the organization and the MER unit through the development of LFAs ensures the inclusion of monitoring indicators to assess the progress and achievements of the projects against the MDGs. The indicators are set against the national targets and timelines to keep tracking of national development. HANDS MER Program has conducted 22 researches in different areas of Sindh for public and private institutions. HANDS MER program assess the need of target population and conduct baseline survey at the village level to identify areas through different qualitative and quantitative tools and techniques including PRA (Participatory Reflection Analysis) , social Mapping, well being, Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) and structured questionnaire. MER Program conducted different need assessment in different projects. Program Reviews were conducted to assess the progress against the targets identified in log frame through participatory approach, identify issues and challenges for achieving the targets and places recommendations for improving the performance till the project life. It is the responsibility of MER program to conduct evaluation of the ongoing programs of the organization to assess the progress and performance against the already set targets. HANDS several times hired by many public and private organizations to evaluate their programs. HANDS conducted an external evaluation of READ Foundation in Azad`Jammu & Kashmir. Evaluation checklist, questionnaire and guidelines were used for the assessment and review of existing status and progress of the organization and its intervention units in perspective of the mission of the organization. Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) is necessary to measure the program performance and effectiveness. HANDS has well established Monitoring and Evaluation system, which supports all projects, programs and district offices in their data collection data management and information generation. In addition through the supportive supervisory mechanism at all program levels, keep the communication of information and feedback mechanism more effective. This information is used to review the progress, to take timely decisions regarding the modification in project implementation and future planning. HANDS achievements of last year has made it fastest growing Non Governmental Organization of the country. The horizontal and vertical expansion is evidence of HANDS quality of services. |
info@hands.org.pk
|
|
Phone |
+922134532804
|
Website |