10 years ago TSDC was initiated by a group of dedicated volunteers of the locality who were motivated by the spirit of traditional social work and volunteerism. The active participation of community level traditional social workers with a governance structure combined in themselves the spirit of traditional social work and skills of professional social work which have given a distinctive attributes to TSDC as a local level unique NGO, where local community participation is in-built. Since then with the cooperation of local communities and international donor agencies, TSDC has been imparting various activities related to human & health development. The main aim of TSDC is to improve the socio-economic and health situation of the communities and promotion of Self-Help movement in targets groups.
In the formative stage covering the period 2000- 2001 TSDC started to organize poor male and female in the project area and formation of target groups. TSDC gathered as much information as it could about village communities in order to find out the best possible solutions. The monitoring & evaluation activities were done by the TSDC focusing mainly on target achievement. During this stage it was really difficult by the part of TSDC in determining the solution with addressed the real needs of the communities.
In the second stage responding the period of 1994-96, Observation and other development methods were used so that TSDC could better understand the needs and priorities of the communities, based on collected information on health issues along with awareness creation and mobilization of civil society for village development activities. The monitoring & evaluation was done by TSDC mainly, but community was consulted. Throughout this stage many lessons were learned, and TSDC realized that village people could understand and could articulate their needs and the way of solution. It was also found that the people had some resources of indigenous knowledge and skills that could be combined with TSDC knowledge.
Since 2002 TSDC has been applying its development approach with the concept of Self-help promotion. TSDC fully has changed its role from implementer to facilitator. With this development approach, village development committee has been formed by the direct participation of target group members and civil society and others CBOs representatives. TGs are playing their role as main actor and organization for village development while TSDC plays a facilitating role to build capacity of TGs.
During the year 2009-2010 TSDC implemented people’s participatory development activities in 96 project villages of Saturia, Manikgang sadar and Dulatpur Upazilla under the District of Manikgang of Bangladesh. The major activities have been promoting Self-help organizations at village level and mobilizing local resources, creating community awareness and motivating health and family planning, Education, and Human Rights. The activities also include collaboration and extension of available local government services and health facilities for health issues, and mobilization to the civil societies to raise their voluntary support to the poor community.
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