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Excerpts from the fifth M. A. Bakeer Markar memorial lecture, delivered at the Mahaweli Kendra, Colombo on September 12.

by Dr. A. T. Ariyaratne

An educated young girl from the village with the help of mothers is selected and trained for starting a pre-school and taking care of the nutrition, health and psychosocial needs of the pre-schoolchildren. Similarly, the school going children are organized under the leadership of an organized women's group.

This second step is what is known as social infrastructure building where the community is organized according to their age groups and basic needs.

In actual fact the people themselves are organized to satisfy by their own efforts categories of needs coming under the following sectors:

1. The physical and psychological environment
2. Clean water for drinking and water for irrigation purposes
3. Simple clothing
4. Nutritional requirements
5. Health and sanitation
6. Housing
7. Energy requirements
8. Communication needs
9. Education
10. Cultural and spiritual needs

Here is a chain of activities around which people are motivated, constructively organized and activated. The inherent potential skills of people young or old thus get awakened and they put to use the knowledge they possess and get themselves involved in decision-making and implementation.

The more results they see the more they get away from mere slogans and divisive forces and develop people's power to win their rights by lawful and non-violent methods. The third stage in a people's awakening process is the organizing of a village Sarvodaya Shramadana Society registered with the governmental authorities so that they can function as an independent legal body.

Fourth stage of the process is where people start their own economic development activities beginning with a Savings and Credit Programme progressing into their own Sarvodaya Village Development Bank. There are over eight hundred such banks already functioning successfully.

The fifth stage is when they join hands with similar societies around their community for networking and mutual support to achieve higher targets catering to the needs of a cluster of villages.

In this manner in 15,000 villages in Sri Lanka we have been able to transcend all man made divisions and make tens of thousands of families belonging to all three communities and religions to work towards a common goal of national awakening which we call Deshodaya.

To assist the efforts of the village people the Sarvodaya Movement has established 340 divisional level centres, 34 district level centres, 08 Development Education institutes, a large headquarters complex at Moratuwa with specialized professional units in areas such as Early Childhood Development, Maternal Welfare and Women's Participation, Economic Uplift, Legal Services, Care for the orphans, the handicapped, the refugees, the old and the destitute, Communication Technology, Vocational Training, Environment, and National and World Peace. ( To be continued )

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