Jaipur, A noteworthy change in the behavior and attitude of rural communities on the gender issues has been witnessed in 70 Village Panchayats of 13 districts in Rajasthan on the completion of a three-year-long project on gender sensitization sponsored by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). The improvement in villagers’ attitude is the result of an intensive awareness campaign. The project’s outcome was discussed at a workshop organised by the leading advocacy organization, the Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), which implemented the project, here three days ago. Representatives of partner groups from the 13 districts highlighted the strategies adopted, material distributed and messages conveyed to the Panchayati Raj functionaries as well as the residents of the rural areas.
The PRIA Director in New Delhi, Mr. Manoj Rai, said the cooperation extended to the villagers in getting their grievances resolved would generate positive results for awareness generation. “The activists working at the grassroots must continuously raise people’s issues at Gram Sabha meetings and provide help to the government officers,” he said. The UNFPA State Coordinator, Mr. Sunil Thomas Jacob, said the results and experiences of the project would be shared shortly with the state government. He assured of assistance in different areas of rural development to replicate success in the gender-related project. The PRIA Project Manager, Mr. Santosh Kumar Kaushal, provided details of maternal and child health indicators and village profiles compiled during the project’s implementation.
-Kalyan Singh Kothari, Media Consultant
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