On 2014

The last year at Sanjog was essentially around a lot of ritual doing….the rituals of creating, maintaining, coordinating, destroying and then re-creating ideas, systems and energies.

We didn’t do these rituals because we didn’t have something else to do. We did them because we had a lot of things to do, and because we wanted to do those lots of things very well! And if I had to describe what we did, it best comes to me as visuals of the 5 elements of wood, fire, earth, metal and water. And that’s how I am going to share our experiences of the journey last year…

saw us in the role of visionaries. We planned new ways of working, new systems within and without the organization. The leadership in the organization in many ways took shape and the responsibility of action, growth and expansion that comes with it. Strategic plans for the organization were planned, new projects and frameworks were brainstormed, research ideas were conceptualized and ways of being and acting were visualized, mapped and discussed. All in all, we initiated, created and started off…

inspired the direction giving and networking in the organization. So the focusing on survivors participation in all programmatic planning, implementing and monitoring; the focus on investing in field social workers in our partner organizations and the focus on the cycle of testing, implementing and learning from there, was the way to go for us..the direction we set for ourselves. And keeping this direction of programming in mind, networking with other organizations (donors) and individuals for raising awareness on Sanjog’s work, vision and programmes, became one of the key activities we did. Meeting Foundations, sharing our project ideas with corporate philanthropists and engaging with national and state governments has been core networking and lobbying initiatives with the founder members of Sanjog were super busy with prioritizing, branding, messaging and marketing.

With regard to the Earth element on coordination, well, that was the most actively done activity here in the last year – facilitating, supporting, allocating, team building, arranging, distributing information – all of this happened in immense amounts to ensure smooth systemic operations and establish a healthy work environment. And yes, we cannot forget the hours of crisis management, arguments, heated discussions and peaceful resolutions and problem solving that had to happen amongst the team within Sanjog and with the partners outside! Left us exhausted and energized at the same time…

saw the achiever in us in full swing. We implemented two big projects in the last year with absolutely 3 new pilot initiatives. A big leap, taken with lots of conviction and tentative capacities but we went all out for it. We ensured quality control of these programmatic activities- psychosocial trainings, researches, advocacy initiatives, monitoring assignments, managed changes, followed planned strategies of implementation and tried to achieve set targets in time. This part of Sanjog’s work exhausted us since we were all implementing, learning and re-learning on the job but we went ahead and did them with as much rigor and integrity as we could. And the end of the year was then spent in consolidation and reflection.

is as I see it, the most important part of the organization which inspires us to carry on. It’s like the digestive system. So this process tells us, what worked, what didn’t, why, when, where and how should we move ahead. The philosopher in us is who we wanted to evoke in this process- to take stock of what we did, conduct appraisals and evaluations, manage resources and see where we are standing in reference to the bigger picture.

So we seemed to have done it all, and standing at the end of last year’s journey, it feels to me that we did well. We have ambitions and empathy, want to perform, need to develop more capacities and alignment, aspire to be systemicallyrnstrong and desire to work with other organizations, individuals, agencies and systems. And another year ahead ofrnus to do all this…

Looking back, the highlight of the last year was the faith on the organizations capacities and capabilities by tworninternational organizations and their investment in the organizations institutional and programmatic growth. BothrnAnesvad Foundation (Spain) and Kamonohashi Project (Japan), invested in Sanjog..in its pilot/ experimentalrninitiatives on Restorative Care, Survivors’ leadership programmes and legal research initiatives. And wernexperienced both the highs of successes and the lows of challenges in these programmatic journeys. All of those havernbeen captured in snapshots in this report.

So here’s looking forward to another year of learning, experimenting, stumbling, getting up, walking and running for all of us at Sanjog… and this year, shall not forget to celebrate more!