Introduction
DES Pakistan's
Introduction and Background
Development & Empowerment Society (DES) is an independent registered non-government and nonprofit civil society organization. Prime motto of DES is capacity building and services delivery to the deprived and marginalized people of the society.
In 2015 a group of educated, dynamic and like-minded youth working in the development sector, got together to establish an organization, for addressing the most urgent and pressing needs of the peoples. True to this spirit the organization was named Development & Empowerment Society.
Considering their association with the development sector the group was conscious of the overabundance of problems troubling the development. Consequently, the organization’s focus was not kept limited either in terms of geography or sector. DES has been carrying a range of interventions in the areas of education, health & hygiene, youth & women empowerment, emergency response & preparedness, governance, free legal aid, human rights, etc.
The type of activities undertaken by the organization range from capacity building to service delivery, with focus remaining on the deprived and marginalized segments of the society. Whereas in terms of operations what characterizes DES’s functioning are its efforts to (a) enlist involvement of the locals when initiating activities at the grass root level; and (b) mobilize women for bringing peace, tolerance, and development in society.
DES Pakistan's
Mission Statement
To empower the less-prioritized and marginalized communities/groups through education, awareness raising, capacity building and service delivery, and to help them through self-fulfilled approach to play a constructive role for development of society
DES Pakistan's
Vision
A self-developed, resilient and just society, free of all kinds of discriminations and human rights violations
DES Pakistan's
Objectives of DES
- To educate the deprived and under privilege common folk about the basic human rights and find basis to incorporate their efforts and mobilization to achieve maximum output
- To enable the community in development of local level institutions and assist them in undertaking community based welfare and development interventions.
- Implementation of women welfare and development programs aimed at socio-economic empowerment of women through their participation in all developmental programs.
- To Provide quality legal assistance to adolescent victims of sexual abuse, exploitation and trafficking, especially street children in conflict with law and children in detention, vulnerable to sexual abuse.
- Promote Gender Equity.
- To ensure full participation of grassroots level organizations in decision making process including problem identification, planning, management, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation aimed at sustainability.
- To facilitate easy access to credit and motivate communities for group saving leading towards small enterprise development and income generating activities aimed at economic empowerment.
- To work for water supply, sanitation and hygiene.
- To establish resource centers aimed at facilitating target communities and local level institutions through information, education and communication.
- Assisting communities in disaster preparedness and mitigation through various community based disaster risk reduction program.
- To develop effective linkages with government line agencies, nongovernment organizations, and donor agencies working for community development.
- Human resource development and training aimed at skill enhancement and knowledge up gradation in order to ensure better implementation of participatory rural development programs by community partners.
- Conservation of natural resources, bio-diversity and environmental protection.
- Raising awareness of environmental issues through advocacy, networking, public interest litigation and education.
- Organizing issue-specific and objective-oriented campaigns building social pressure to influence decision-making at national and international levels in favor of deprived, marginalized and vulnerable segments of the community.
DES Pakistan's
Approach of Action
DES Pakistan appreciates and respects positive endeavors from individual, communities and national and international governmental and non-governmental organizations. The organization always takes consideration into the following approaches during the programs implementation process:
Participatory approach: We encourage our beneficiaries to participate actively in our programs right from needs assessment to implementation, monitoring and evaluation, and benefit sharing.
People-centered approach: Community people are central to all our development efforts and interventions.
Coordination and collaboration approach: Activities are effectively coordinated with governmental and non-governmental organizations from grassroots to district, national and international levels.
Accountability and transparency: All the program activities and corresponding budget allocated for that particular place are transparent; anyone at any time can have access to this information if requested.
Needs driven approach: Program activities will not be imposed from the top, but are selected based on the demand made by the beneficiaries.
Rights-Based Approach: DES Pakistan is guided by its humanitarian policies which actively nurture all aspect of human rights and integrates it to enable and empower the people for asserts their fundamental right.
Ownership & sharing: At DES Pakistan projects, local stakeholders are involved in the decision-making process and community activities are carried out with local participation during the course of project implementation. Efficient community participation, cost sharing and coordination with government line agencies create community accountabilities and ownership of the project.
Sustainability: As far as possible, DES Pakistan strives to ensure that organizational and community-based activities supported through community development project benefits are realized, maintained and continue after the end of the project.
Policy Advocacy: DES Pakistan ensures that the each of its action, must be linked with the Policy frameworks of Government (Provincial and Federal) and wherever possible, DES Pakistan will enforce the government to take necessary measures accordingly to fulfill the right holders’ requirement.
Folk wisdom: DES Pakistan respects the knowledge of indigenous people regarding the local area, historical backgrounds, local practices and way of living and encourages the elders to contribute their skillful knowledge to the projects implementation strategies and the new generation to find out the local ways of solutions of the problems.
Social Mobilization: DES Pakistan always uses to incorporate the social mobilization strategy into the projects to decrease the chances of conflicts and ensure the community ownership of the project interventions. Our field mobilization teams get communities onboard through the introduction, sensitization on importance, the realization of the problem, organizing them and formation of community groups take part in decision making at every stage of intervention.
Des Pakistan Development & Empowerment Society has been registered under the Societies Registration Act XXI of 1860 with Government of Sindh.