Over the years CDHI has undertaken a series of interrelated activities in the above areas. The current portfolio includes:

• Goal India project on Model Village:

  Goal India has sanctioned a model village project in Turturikhand of Kumar gram block in Jalpaiguri district. The project seeks to develop the villages under the Gram Panchayat by developing livelihoods opportunities, health and education facilities and involve the local Panchayats and government departments in the development of the villages. Local communities have been helped to develop their capacities and assert their entitlements from the government.

• Community led initiatives in primary education-Buxa Shiksha Jyoti Abhiyan: This comprises of nine primary schools established under the community partnership and supported by UNICEF West Bengal. The schools are implemented in the remote villages location in the difficult hilly terrain inhabited mostly by the Bhutias and Nepalis. Before establishing the schools a thorough visit was made of the area together with the team of officials and functionaries of UNICEF, Government of West Bengal, local Panchayats and the members of the community. Preference for the schools was identified through  the stakeholders consultation. Subsequently, planning for the schools followed a community consultation route. The schools cater to the needs of the children spread over 11 villages. The schools are managed by a core committee consisting of the members of the community, the teachers and facilitated by CDHI. Seeing the success the local government has taken over the program under SSA while maintaining the unique community autonomy. CDHI is still in felicitation role. This is an important transition and we look forward to a smooth continuation.  

• Child Labour Schools  : CDHI has established its credentials in designing and implementing innovative approaches for the education of the children from the marginalized communities. The school program in Buxa,Falakata and Maynaguri has helped us sharpen our strategies and focus. 
   

  National Child labour Commission has been  dialoguing with CDHI to organize and manage innovative schools for the child labour at five locations. Although the commission has its own framework CDHI offered innovative approaches to training and hand holding the teachers, monitoring and mainstreaming. The approach has been appreciated by the commission which is offering support to extend the services to other areas. We have created an effective interface with the communities and institutions of governance which are offering their local support. The local schools are coming forward to mainstream some of the children from the schools. A good community –school relationship is growing.

• Mission Nava Disha- Rehabilitation of surrendered militants: North Bengal suffered a social turmoil when several youths joined a separatist movement. The government initiate harsh measures to silence their moves. Many of them were charged under stringent anti-national acts, put behind bars and killed also. This resulted into complete checking of the violent activities but this resulted into strewn social fibre. Government of West Bengal, under a support from the Planning Commission, Government of India, initiated rehabilitation activities. The rehabilitation was facilitated by CDHI which included training, counselling, coordination, linkages and follow-up. So far 1200 surrendered militants have been rehabilitated under various entrepreneurial support. As a result they have returned to the path of construction and creative enterprises. According to the current status around 65% of them have been earning descent livelihoods besides the dignity they have recovered.
   

• CASA support for Buxa: Our collaboration with CASA , though informal, has been active for long through their Alipurduar centre. We have been participating in their programs as friends and supporters. The relationship is now formalizedthrough our association for an awareness and capacity building project in the Rajabhatkhaba GP.   

The project is in operation since April 2008.

The achievements include:

• A series of training on entitlements
• Training on natural resources management and
• Livelihoods opportunity through NREGS
   
• Community knowledge and livelihoods centre: Considering the inevitable role of education we have tried community forum to support primary education. Our community led strategy has worked quite well and we have moved a step further and offered expanded responsibility to the community to institutionalize their support to the sector. During the process we realized that education has strong link with livelihoods. The week livelihoods endowments often come in the way of effective engagement of the poor community with education. Considering this CDHI has been experimenting with facilitating a knowledge forum which the community has been using to support education and livelihoods opportunities. The activities include community mentoring to the students, skill development and capacity building to the community and institutional development for them. The self financed program is evolving useful learning in which the community is using the forum to reflect around the key issues of education and livelihoods and education and articulating appropriate actions.    
• Women federation and micro-finance: CDHI, since the very beginning, has strong gender interface which has resulted into a strong owners managed federation. CDHI has been able to facilitate an autonomous status to the federation which has developed a strong financial linkage with the banks. There are some 700 members with 8000 members. Uttar Bango Terai Mahila Samiti(UBTMS) has positioned as a unique institution of the women and has created a niche for itself.    
• Research and document initiatives: CDHI has been involved in the research and documentation activities since the beginning. It has conducted studies related to RSVY program, micro-planning and action research, research related to health beliefs and values system and so forth. Currently CDHI is studying National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) and its program and act in Jalpaiguri. The study has been sponsored by the NREGA cell.   

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