Koraput is one of the southern districts of Odisha with low social and economic indicators. A majority of its population (52%) are tribal forming 24% percent of the state’s tribal population. The quality of life indicators like literacy, life expectancy, employment, health are low. In this context SOVA has widened its livelihood options, (both farm and non-farm sectors) as one of the key strategies, for reducing poverty in the remote underdeveloped tribal pockets of Koraput district of Odisha. Sustainable agriculture practices, conservation of natural resources, promotion of people’s federations, and facilitation for access to government’s social security schemes, improving market linkages and building skill for promotion of farm and non-farm enterprise are some of the key elements in this pursuit. The livelihood strategy of SOVA focuses on improving the income of the rural poor providing food and social security.

In addition, SOVA builds the capacity and supports the landless households, agricultural labourers, and small and marginal landowners for non-farm activities for a sustainable source of income thus visioning to ensure food security through diverse IGA and multi-cropping. Emphasis is made on convergence with mainstream development programmes and other stakeholders for program sustainability.

Major Intervention – strategic and Program

SOVA forms village development committees(VDC) to work together to make the most out of their indigenous resources, such as land, livestock, forest, and income-generating activities. The program are designed, planned, implemented, and evaluated by the community organizations themselves to ensure stability and sustainability.

Improved access to Community Resources

SOVA has been empowering community on rights and entitlement over forest and land resources using Forest Rights Act (FRA) and PESA guidelines. Along with this, community institutions like FRC (Forest right Committee), VSS (Van Samrakhyan Samiti) are strengthened to facilitate the rights and entitlements over natural resources; create a strong community awareness for development programmes and facilitate formation and strengthening of these institution at the community and panchayat level; and ensure effective implementation of government policies for accessibility, maintenance, and management of community resources through demarcation and end to end use.

Skill Improvement for better Employability of Youth

SOVA is instrumental in analyzing the demand and supply part of skill human resources among the youth in the tribal district of Koraput. To address the need of employability among youths in the tribal districts the organisation focuses on skill building of youths in agriculture and non agriculture streams; imparting training in vocations like nursery raising, vegetable cultivation, Goat and sheep rearing, mushroom cultivation, masonry, driving wire binding, sugarcane unit management etc. to enable them to improve employability through linkages with agencies, and providing supports to trained youths in terms of preparation of business development plans (BDPs), linkages with financial institutions, etc. to start their own enterprise.

       Strategic Intervention

• To train disadvantaged urban youth in employable skills.
• To build a strong networking with employers and ensure addressing their workforce demand by skilling youth accordingly.
• To provide tailor-made and need-based programmes such as language and communication skills, life and positive thinking skills, personality development skills, management skills, behavioural skills.

Risk minimization through community adaptation

As a part of its intervention, SOVA has been prioritising for adoption of adaptation measures of climate change, like water conservation, bonding, protection and use of forest and water resources, foraging resilience of livelihoods security of the poor and vulnerable.

Entrepreneurship Development

Entrepreneurship is one of the core areas being promoted by SOVA to enhance the income of these people. NTFP as well as non-farm based enterprise are taken up by the community members. Non-farm based enterprise include goatery, vegetable vending, petty business, mushroom farming, sugarcane processing, pulveriser unit etc. In order to make community realise the commercial value of their produce SOVA develops the skill of the community members to develop themselves and participate in the process of value addition and engage with markets as an equal participant.

Strengthening rural livelihood

Land holding among community members is very limited and the community members have to face challenges of its geographical set up, varying climate, low productivity and erratic water resources. To combat these issues SOVA has developed a program to help the sustainable livelihoods of local farming households which aims to help their economic development by sustainably improving household incomes. It helps to improve the yield and quality of crops by promoting good agricultural practices which includes training on pre and post management of crops, using natural and chemical pesticides and the benefits of these on soil quality, training farmers with more efficient ways to harvest yields, benefits of quality grading and sorting produce for better prices and methods of identifying when crops have reached maturity. The organisation promotes organic kitchen gardens by providing training on establishing organic kitchen gardens, educating farmers on good nutrition.