The target population of this Project are the poor households, the most vulnerable sections including the physically challenged and the marginalized communities. The project follows the CDD approach wherein village communities identify their own needs, design and plan interventions and implement and monitor them by adopting the following key non-negotiable principles of the project.

	Inclusion of the poorest in all project activities.
	Direct transfer of funds to village communities.
	Village communities to prioritize, plan, implement and monitor the project activities in a participative manner.
	Transparency and accountability in all activities.
	Monitored and evaluated the project activities by the community it self.

Initiation Activities

The Project adopts involving CDD approach, involving village communities at every level of project Implementation.

The project activities to start with are aimed at Social Mobilization of the poor and Marginalized. After formation and Capacity Building of the CBOs, the project focuses on the livelihood promotion of the target population. 

• Initial Communication to create awareness about project
• Identification of target poor by participatory methodology
• Grama Sabha approval and release of panchayat initiation fund

Under the project, the target poor are identified by the community using participatory methodologies and the list is approved by the Grama Sabha. The Participatory identification of the poor (PIP) methodology has proved to be a powerful and transparent tool to identify the poorest and the excluded members of the village communities.

This methodology involving the community has found wise acceptance among all stakeholders and is considered the best way of identifying the target population.

Developing Pro-poor, autonomous and accountable institutions with target people’s representation to implement the project at the village level.

The Village Poverty Reduction Committee(VPRC)

In Thiruvallur District the VPRCs and SACs are formed as per the details below

The Village Poverty Reduction Committee (VPRC) is a community organization formed under the project predominantly with the representatives of the target population. Each hamlet of the Panchayat is represented by a woman SGH member from the target population. A PLF office bearer a representative of the disabled,2 member from youth, are also nominated to VPRC by Grama Sabha. The Village Panchayat is the EX-officio Chairperson of the VPRC.
 

Social Audit Committee(SAC)

Social Audit Committee (SAC) is constituted by Grama Sabha which plays the role of guardian of project principles during the project principles' during project implementation. The committee of accountable to Grama sabha and reports to grama Sabha on regular basis.

Self Help Groups(SHG) the left out target poor, and persons with disability are formed into self help groups with 10-20 in a group or 5 - 10 in the case of persons with disabilities. The Members in the SHG are given training, to build their capacities and encouraged to save money. They are then linked to banks, Government Schemes and access funds to start livelihood activities. Sufficient hand holding support is given to the SHGs and are monitored by CSTs(Community SGH trainers) who have been developed by the project. In Thiruvallur district, so far totally 230 CST has been identified, trained and in service.   

Self Help Groups(SHG) – Affiliation of Old Groups

Many of the target people are already been members of the existing SHG, in order to give the assistance to them also, more focus has been given to affiliate their existing SHGs with the VPRC and restructured PLF. Only after the affiliation process, the project supports like, SHG Monitoring through CST, Bank Linkages, Seed Money and Amudha Surabi Fund, etc

All SHGs in a Village Panchayat form a federation. The Panchayat level Federation of SHGs is a forum to share their experience and to voice their problems. PLFs provide sustainability and self reliance to the SHGs.

        The PLFs of VKP Blocks are provided with a livelihood corpus fund called Amudha Surabi Fund (ASF), which may vary from minimum of 6 Lakhs to maximum of 10 Lakhs according the size of the village. This fund should be utilized exclusively for the livelihood development of the target community. There is a well defined guidelines for , how the ASF can be utilized.

CB for Community

• Induction Training
• Functional Training
• Exposure Visit

• PIP & COM Training

• Fund Management Trainings

• Government Trainings

• SHG Training Modules I to III

• PLF Trainings

• CLG Trainigs

VKP has a special commitment to Empower and mainstream the physically challenged and most vulnerable people in the community, by providing them special attention during social mobilisation and institution building of the Project. Consequently providing them financial assistance, hand holding support  and community facilitation to create livelihood assets, quality of life and securing their dignity. The project has been able to reach the marginalized like the disabled, vulnerable and tribals and bring them into the mainstream. Apart from assisting disabled SHGs, financial assistance is also provided by the VPRCs to disabled and vulnerable persons individually for starting livelihood activities. Some of the Project interventions for the betterment of Differently abled and Vulnerable as follows

VKP Clearly knows that, the project support or project fund alone not sufficient to reduce the poverty of the target people. So leverage of assistance and support from various sources are very crucial in the task of poverty eradication. In Thiruvallur VKP project has build a very good rapport with the line departments and leverage the following supports to our target community through convergence.

• Differently Abled Assistance through DDRO

• Vulnerable Assistance through Revenue Dept.

• Welfare Assistances through various Welfare Boards.

• Tribal Assistance through Department of Tribal Development.

•  Free Housing under IAY, KVVT and DTD.

One of the main focus of the VKP is the development of Livelihood of the target poor. To establish the livelihood assets and scale up of activities is money consuming process for which, the money spent under VKP alone not sufficient. Hence VKP concentrates on trapping bank loans through SHG movement for the investments on livelihood promotion.

Group Subsidies

Thiruvallur district is one of the tribal rich district in Tamilnadu. One of the common identity of the tribal was the poverty. As a Poverty reduction project VKP have a separate Tribal Development Plan aims at building strong self reliant and self managing community organisations for tribals and enables them to access economic and social opportunities to overcome poverty and improve their living standards with dignity, human rights and cultural uniqueness of indigenous people.

• Higher allocation of Project funds to tribal families

• Special institutional arrangements such as additional and special VPRCs.

• Tribal sub-committees to plan and execute tribal development plans.

• Promotion of tribal specific livelihoods.

• Engaging tribal community facilitators.

• Convergence with forest, health and other departments.

Promoting individual livelihoods through small loans from VPRCs or through the livelihood corpus available with Panchayat Level Federations (PLFs) of SHGs. Promoting small group activities through Revolving fund and other Bank linkages  

Then the Individuals and the and Groups those who are all situated in same location and involved in the same liveligood activity  are formed in to small Common livelihood Group in order to get some commom facilities like Collective Procurement of Raw materials, Collective Marketting to get better price and support services, etc…

Then the CLGs and EAGs of cluster level are federated to involve in a higier level activities like, Value addition, Branding, Packaging and forwarding etc…