Annual Reports

Annual Report 2018 - 19
It gives a great sense of achievement in placing before you the fifteenth Annual Report of the Centre for Health and Social Justice (CHSJ). CHSJ was envisioned by a group of experienced development professionals to promote health and well-being of vulnerable communities. Over the years CHSJ has strengthened bottom-up development processes in the field of health and pioneered interventions for getting men involved in efforts to bring about gender equality. CHSJ’s work has included strengthening community-based efforts along with research and knowledge production as well as through advocacy. Today it has a competent team and strong relations with various key stakeholders in India and across the world, especially in the Global South.

Annual Report 2017-18
It gives me great pleasure to place before you the 13th Annual Report of Centre for Health and Social Justice. The 13th year can be very meaningful because it indicates that the second cycle of the ‘seven year itch’ is due. For organisations like ours this is like a milestone in the growth process where you pause, review the past and chart the journey ahead. Institutional growth and effectiveness have been core elements of CHSJ’s functioning from the very beginning, but this year was important because it marked the planning for transition of leadership in CHSJ. While the team at CHSJ has changed completely since its inception, the top leadership continues to remain the same. This year no staff member left CHSJ which marks a remarkable stability in a work-world where changes are rapid. The Senior Management Team at CHSJ has also been stable for a few years, and ready for a new challenge.

Annual Report 2016-17

CHSJ is now established in the second decade of its life. At one level, in the course of the last decade CHSJ’s work moved from a focus at the national level-strengthening knowledge generation, building consensus and influencing policy to a more community based approach. Over the last five years or more we have been able to develop the principles of a nuanced community based approach which links the community to the district, state and national levels.
A decade provides a reasonable time frame to understand the relevance and sustainability of the work that is started by an organization. As an organization based out of the national capital we are often asked whether we work directly with communities, and since we say we don’t, the question follows that what is the value added through our approach.

Annual Report 2015-16

This year CHSJ completed its tenth year and started on its eleventh. It was set up in 2005 by a group of development activists who were keen to establish an organisation which promoted health rights of vulnerable communities. A small two person team began the work by trying to build critical resonance among civil society actors to various health sector reforms that were being rolled out across the country. This initiative later took
root as the community monitoring approach and was adopted within the National Rural Health Mission. The small scale studies conducted by CHSJ and its partners provided critical feedback to the policy processes around health. Subsequently, we also built synergies with other practitioners across the world and today CHSJ is among the leading organisations in the world strengthening participatory health governance.

Annual Report 2014-2015

Strengthening its base at the grassroots and widening its horizons to the global level, in the ninth year of its work, CHSJ managed both processes simultaneously. The strength of these parallel movements by the organisation can be gauged from the fact that CHSJ's work in both its primary focus areas - community action for health rights and men and gender equality - were equally recognised from the local to the global level. This year CHSJ became the global secretariat and communications hub for COPASAH (Community of Practitioners on Accountability and Social Action in Health) which has a presence in four regions of the world. CHSJ also hosted the secretariat of the 2nd MenEngage Global Symposium 2014 – Men and Boys for Gender Justice, organised in New Delhi in November by the MenEngage Global Alliance along with UNFPA and others.

Annual Report 2013-2014

In the eighth year since its inception CHSJ expanded its work in the field by adding many new projects and
also developed a vision for the future that was heralded by a wider segment than ever before. This has been the year when CHSJ’s participatory and collaborative work on gender found resonance across the spectrum. CHSJ was invited to several government forums to share its expertise at the policy and programmatic level. The organisation’s efforts also found acceptance and recognition at the global level. In a significant achievement that portends well for its growth, CHSJ was selected by the MenEngage Global Alliance to host the Secretariat of the 2nd MenEngage Global Symposium 2014 – Engaging Men and Boys for Gender Justice, to be held in New Delhi in November. With several competing claims, what turned in CHSJ’s favour was the depth and spread of its gender work and the country’s new political and public sensitivity to the issue. The media too appeared to view CHSJ as a reliable resource centre, coming to it for information, stories and data on gender. Overall, CHSJ emerged as a hub for generating expertise on gender justice and equality.

Annual Report 2012-2013

The year 2012 – 2013 marked a year of consolidation and growth for CHSJ following a year with some challenges and uncertainties. In the field of reproductive and sexual health and rights, CHSJ was successfully able to anchor a collaborative process championing women’s rights to voluntary and informed choice in contraceptive services, and also provided research support for a campaign to secure maternal health related rights for women workers in the informal sector. In Delhi, the CHSJ team became an integral part of the city wide mobilisation on the One Billion Rising campaign as well as the protests after the horrific rape on December the 16th. Our work with men on gender in Maharashtra was vindicated through a rigorous mid-term evaluation, which also indicated areas that can be incorporated into public programming.

Annual Report 2011-2012

This was the sixth year of CHSJ, and this year presented successes and challenges in equal measure. On the positive side, the work of CHSJ in the policy domain was vindicated when we were among the few organisations asked to represent civil society interests on the Steering Committee on Health in the 12th Five Year Planning process. We were also able to contribute to the starting up activities of Community Monitoring in NRHM in two states. We continued the process of providing rigorous grassroots level evidence of health policy implementation through our coordination of a series of rapid assessment studies covering eight states. Lessons emanating from our work were also represented in reputed international journals and reports.

Annual Report 2010-2011

This year we had a few successes at the policy level which derived from our successful advocacy in the past. We were also able to expand our work in some areas especially our work with men on issues of gender equality. We also faced some challenges. CHSJ was set up as a national organisation five year ago, and as we move ahead in our journey we realised that the actual arena of health rights fulfillment is at the state level. We strengthened our work in research by developing a separate research division within the organisation. In this report we have tried to capture the summary of our activities and experiences in the course of the last year and synthesise our learning’s.

Annual Report 2009-2010

We started a process of health expenditure tracking in two states - a follow up to our earlier work on community monitoring, but in the totally new domain of finances and economics. Similarly our hosting of the Gains and Gaps : ICPD + 15 Civil Society review process helped us build new partnerships across the country and also exposed us to new ideas and issues. We were able to consolidate our relationships with groups working on social marginalisation. Working with men and boys on the issue of gender justice also moved along. We also conceived and conducted the Leadership Development Programme this year to train and motivate District Programme Managers and civil society representatives. The experience of partnering with a National and International level organisation emboldens us to seek similar collaborations in the future.

Annual Report 2008-2009

During this year we were successfully able to complete our most ambitious project till date - the Community-based Monitoring component of the NRHM CHSJ had been entrusted to provide technical and supervisory support to the implementation of the first phase that covered 1600 villages in 9 states. We were also able to consolidate the process of providing systematic feedback to the Government through carefully collected evidence by completing the Rapid Assessment of Health Programme. We were able to successfully coordinate the National Consultation on the role of TBA within NRHM and its follow-up activities in a number of states. CHSJ was asked to host the secretariat for a review of the implementation of the Program of Action (PoA) of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in India.