The Kudumbashree Story

Women Empowerment

Strengthening Convergence

In 2008, when Kudumbashree Mission accepted standardised bylaws for the community organisations, Evaluation Committees were formed at the PRI level on the lines of that existed in urban local government institutions.

The Evaluation Committee has the following members; the size of the committee is 25 for rural and 40 for urban local governments.

  1. Secretary of the local government
  2. CDS chairperson(s)
  3. The women ward members/ councillors nominated to the CDS by the local government
  4. Department heads and programme heads under the local government
  5. Two former CDS office bearers who are ex-officio members of the CDS
  6. The three volunteers of the CDS (income generation, health and education, infrastructure)
  7. Representatives of financial institutions
  8. Chairpersons of Welfare Standing Committee and Development Standing Committee of the local government
  9. All the members of the local government Steering Committee (the committee consisting of the chairpersons of all the Standing Committees), and convenors of the five sub committees of the CDS (Thrift and Credit, Micro Enterprises, Social Development, Infrastructure, Employment Guarantee Scheme).

The Evaluation Committee serves as a platform for convergence in the implementation of development activities in the local governments. It approves the CDS Action Plan and ensures that the activities proposed in the action plan finds place in the allocative plans of the LSG, transferred institutions and credit plans of financial institutions.

An outcome of the process relating to the new bylaws has been the importance that ADS gained as the mid-layer in the community structure. ADS has been there since the early concept of the Kudumbashree community organisation. However, it had continued as an entity without clearly defined roles and a space in the community structure. The new bylaws aligned ADS with the wards. The new bylaws and the election process brought in ADS into assuming roles as important as those of the other two layers.