Promoting Community Empowerment

Enabling communities to have control over their lives

The Leprosy Mission Trust India’s (TLMTI) Community Empowerment programme works with individuals and communities marginalised due to leprosy, disability, gender, and poverty. The programme focuses on empowering such individuals and communities so that they are able to access their rights and entitlements and live with dignity.

Through this programme, TLMTI aims to:

• Empower persons affected by leprosy/disability, through raising their awareness, building their capacity, and encouraging their participation in the decision-making process, so that they are recognised and respected as equal and contributing members of the society.
• Build strong, equitable and sustainable communities through education, engagement and collaboration.

TLMTI supports people affected by leprosy/disability and their families to form self-help groups (SHGs) or sustain the existing ones. Where mainstream groups exist, it promotes their inclusion in such groups. Where required, it facilitates the formation of inclusive groups of people affected by leprosy/disability and other marginalised members of the society. TLMTI works in partnership with disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) where they exist, and where they do not exist, facilitates their formation. It also sensitises duty bearers to the rights of people affected by leprosy/disability.

TLMTI assists people affected by leprosy/disability to develop advocacy and communication skills. It also assists them to make sure that their environment provides the required opportunities and support to allow them to make decisions and express their needs and desires effectively.

Simultaneously, it sensitises society to the social aspects of leprosy and encourages them to shed their negative attitudes and behaviour towards people affected by leprosy and support their mainstreaming and development.

It equips people affected by leprosy/disability with the information, skills and knowledge to participate in the political process. It works towards bringing visibility to leprosy-related issues. This is done for integrating these issues into the political decision-making process and for making sure that they are at the centre of development policies and programmes.

The Community Empowerment programme is subdivided into six sub-programmes, in order to achieve its objective. They are:

Political Participation

Self-Help Groups

Women Empowerment

Community Mobilisation

Disabled Peoples’ Organisations

Education

Political Participation

Self-Help Groups

Women Empowerment

Community Mobilisation

Disabled Peoples’ Organisations

Education

 

TLMTI works to strengthen civil society organisations (CSOs) for collective action in support of people affected by leprosy/disability. And at the same time, it sensitises the duty bearers to their lawful needs of the right holders. Thus, TLMTI addresses the issues of power, inequality and social injustice, and aims to bring about change that is empowering, fair and inclusive.

Presently, TLMTI implements its Community Empowerment programme through eight community-based projects spread across eight states of India, namely:

Andhra Pradesh

Maharashtra

Bihar

Tamil Nadu

Chhatisgarh

Uttar Pradesh

Delhi

West Bengal