RAWEP - A Tool for Need Assessment among Rural Women

A need assessment is the process of identifying and determining how to bridge the gap between an organization's current and desired state. It is part of a planning process to determine gaps, or “needs,” and address areas for improvement or development. It can help decide where and how resources may be directed, for a specific intervention or method which works well in a rural context. Policymakers and funding agencies who are into rural community developmental activities assess the needs first, to understand the situation and make effective interventions. Rural awareness work experience programme (RAWEP) is an integrated component of B.Sc. (Hons.) Community Science introduced in to the syllabus of B.Sc. Home Science (Hons.) by Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), New Delhi, in the year 2002, which initially facilitates the students to understand the rural situations, status of technologies adopted by rural women, prioritize their problems and to develop skills & attitude working with farm families for overall development in rural areas, aiming at bringing improvement in quality of life of rural families. It gives the real-life exposure to the students through providing a close-knit interaction between students and rural families, giving a base for need assessment that exposes to different challenges and opportunities faced by the farm women, their changed role in household work and allied fields and initiate knowledge, understanding and skills among the rural women which leads to the overall development improving the quality of life of rural families. It also offers a firsthand experience to students to utilize knowledge gained in first three years and transfer simple and improved practices to the rural women. RAWEP is an effective tool to access the needs of rural folk, their challenges and opportunities, their changed role in household work and allied fields. Students get a unique opportunity to initiate knowledge, transfer skills to the rural women, which ultimately contributes to the overall development of their families. This article presents fallouts of their experiences in context of learnings viz. field experience, team work, experiential learning, address the problems at field level, exposure to administration and management issues in context of rural and farm women, planning and implementing of different need based capacity building programmes , collecting information through different methods, participation in developmental programmes, etc for their future field situations along with result in identification of ground reality and original problems, seek greater understanding, discover inventive answers and suggest methods to overcome the problems. Data was gathered based on fieldwork conducted at Meenavolu, Sudhaguda, Madhanpalli, Gundampalli, Kowta(B), Madhapur, Chennayapalem,Goliyathanda, Manugur, Dowthabad, Vedira, Mandhamarri, Kamaripet, villages from Peddapalli, Thadiparthi districts. The study perceives how RAWE programme was engaged to identify the needs and problems of the adopted villages.