"a development management school for enhancing the livelihoods of the poor"

	After a five-year process of evolution and intense debates, dialogues and its own visioning process, Akshara has embarked on an ambitious effort to set-up and manage Gurukulam, a development management school for enhancing the livelihoods of the poor, on October 2, 2003.
Convocation of the First Batch of PLM and 6PLM

Please visit 'Seminars' tab for details of schedule of seminar on 'Careers in Livelihoods/Development Management'.

To professionalise the management of development efforts in general and the efforts for enhancing the livelihoods of the poor in particular, by various individuals and agencies

Specifically it aims to:

1. Provide fresh professionals for the development efforts in general and for enhancing livelihoods of the poor in particular;
2. Build the competencies in terms of knowledge, skills and motivation of the existing human resources including the poor themselves, the professionals and support functionaries in governmental and civil society development organisations engaged in the development efforts; and
3. Offer a variety of platforms and opportunities for improving their professional competencies and fostering requisite value orientation.

In particular, Gurukulam aims at sourcing, creating, nurturing and developing the development management professionals with clear bias towards the poor to improve their livelihoods and livelihoods options. Their specific foci of intervention in the economic field include the processes that lead to (known as four arrows)

Increased income Decreased expenditure (cost, time, energy) Increased Employment and Opportunities Decreased/diversified risk(s)

Vision 2010:

• Availability of required development management professional support for the poor in India (particularly in and around Andhra Pradesh), as and when they require, at an appropriate cost
• Institution of Excellence in Development Management, where learning is possible either in English or in Telugu and other regional languages

Strategic Initiatives to realise Vision:

The Development Management concerns of Gurukulam revolve around four major context specific interrelated themes that are central to the Livelihoods - namely,

• Ecological and environmental context that offers scope and limits the options for Livelihoods;
• Techno-Economical context that offers scope and limit the possibilities for effective and efficient use of the resource base in the production of goods and services to exchange in the market to create wealth;
• Patterns of distribution of wealth that gets produced within the limits imposed by distribution of existing resources, know-how, skills, access to energy, technology, information and markets; and
• Patterns of Expenditures and Investments in securing food, clothing, health, housing, education, credit, insurance, production and employment that offer scope and limits the possibilities of further progress.

These invariably form the core of activities and the thrust of programmes of Gurukulam.

Programs:

• One and Two-year Post Graduate Programs in Livelihoods Management
• 6-month Programs in Development (General and Livelihoods) Management
• Induction to Fresh development/livelihoods management professionals
• 6-10 week Development Management Appreciation Program
• Foundation Programs (1, 2 and 3-4 week): Planning, Information Management, M&L, Livelihoods, Project Management, HRM, People’s Projects, Fifth Discipline, CBA, Appraisal, Mentoring, Learning Processes….
• Learning Programs for the Leaders of the Community and their organisations in Governance

Akshara-Gurukulam has successfully tested and completed the first batch of One Year Post-Graduate Program in Livelihoods Management. All the successful candidates were placed. The participants were blessed by the cooperator par excellence, Sri Rama Reddy, who was the Chief Guest for the convocation.

Activities of the school:

Apart from the programes/courses indicated, Akshara-Gurukulam has the following activities

Experimentation Field Stations and Support to Development Organisations – at least 300 (100 CBOs, 100 NGOs and 100 PRIs) authentic and promising development organizations double up as experimentation field stations of the School and the School extends development support to them.

Field Stations fully managed by the School itself that in turn become independent development organisations

Support to People’s Institutions

Support to Small Organisations

Support to Panchayat Raj Institutions

Workshops, Forums of interaction/exchange, Development Congress … necessary platforms for interactions and exchanges between and among the various players in the development sector including the poor

Demand-driven Training/Learning Programs at the request of the development organizations/projects and CBOs

Consultancy support to large Development Organisations/Government Organisations

Sourcing Professionals and Volunteers and building their collectives, networks…

Support in Building Collectives of the Poor

Research, Material Development and Dissemination

Leadership for Transformation - Workshop Participants

Currently a team of advisers, along with the core team, a pool of fellows/visiting fellows/resource persons, field partners in the form of CBOs, NGOs and PRIs, and collaborators in augmenting the knowledge in the livelihoods, are building up the effort.

Reading Material for RDM Course of PGDRDM (2008) in NIRD

(We acknowledge the copyrights of authors or institutions to which these papers belong. These have been put at one place only for the ease of retrieval by participants and to facilitate class discussions)

Sessions 1 and 2

Sessions 3 and 4

Sessions 5 - 8

Sessions 9-10

Coming in July - Please Check Back the First Week of July.

Gurukulam's eLearning Course List as of July 2009 is:

This course assumes that every person involved in implementing any development intervention would want to work towards reducing poverty and its impact on the people (both poor and non-poor). And that the livelihoods worker would be no different, as livelihoods intervention is also a development intervention. One can intervene to change a situation only if one understands the situation and its different dimensions. Hence, understanding poverty and the feelings of the poor should be the starting point for any course dealing with development intervention.