About ASHA
Association for Social Humanitarian Action (ASHA) is leading state level voluntary organisation formed in 2002. The operational area of the organization consist of 140 village of Khariar,sinapali and Komna blocks of Nuapada district of odisha state. These blocks belongs to the KBK(Kalahandi, Balangir, Koraput) district of odisha which are notoriously famous for their endemic provery, food insecurity, hunger, malnutrition and starvation death.
Background
ASHA has already completed several years of its intervation. The organization was established in a year when the political atmosphere of Nuapada was hot with topics like hunger, miigration, and stravation death and child sale. Researchers, academicianss, journalists and high-level officials were pouring into the district to analyze the Nuapada phenomenon and find answer to the problem. There was wrangling between the party in power and the opposition, the NGOs and the administative machineries.It was a complex scenario. A group of youths of this ditrict-all I their twenties became very much interested in this. To know the ground realities they visited various villages, talked with the people intimately and gathered first hand information on the situation the rural areas.
The Situation was actually precarious but the problem of the district was not unique. What was startling for the group was that the richness of the natural resources of the district had not helped the people to get rid of the poverty trap.The group tried to find out the causes and the search continued. In this process the group realized that the main problem in the whole process of developmental intervention in Nuapada was the lack of proper policy to overcome the recurring droughts with the active involvement of the local people. With this in mind the group set the goal. It decided to work intensively to create awareness within the local people and help them gain confidence to influence the developmental process.
The year 2015-16 for ASHA was full of challenges-the Challenge ensuring participation of the community in the process of development and facilitating them to gain controls over common properties and public goods. The sailing has however not been easy. The changing nature and functioning of market forces, voluntary sector and government policies, in recent years have forced ASHA to reconsider reformulate its methods of intervenyion.
The year 2015-16 bears a significant role in shaping out the future strategies of ASHA. To make the members of the group accountable for the duties and performamnces it conducted a series of intensive discussion and reformulated the structure of its operation thereby creating space for each individual to work independently.